Happy New Year…in February! The start of this 2022 has been pretty busy and that’s why I haven’t written my first post of the year at the good old blog until now. If you read my newsletter (I hope you do, it’s where I share my news, well obviously, and sometimes I also talk about behind the scenes stuff that I don’t publish here at the blog…you can sign up here if you wish) you already know that I wanted to “challenge” myself to sew more lingerie…for fun and for educational purposes too. I decided I’d sew two makes per month and I’d post about them here.
My aim with this plan is to give myself more freedom to dream up projects that I would normally not do because there are always more urgent tasks to do…and to fully enjoy that freedom I’m creating this rigid “two makes per month” plan that I publicly announce so I know you guys can keep me accountable, haha. Anyway, I’m going to sew with my own patterns and I’ll try to use them in new ways so you can get inspired too and I’d like to also try new patterns from other designers as there’s so much cool stuff out there I’d like to sew!
For the very first set of the year I made this Hanna bralette + Vera panties mesh polka dot set. If you are familiar with this bralette pattern you know that it uses stretch lace for a delicate look, but actually you can use so many other materials too. I had this polka dot off white stretch mesh in my stash for a while now and I thought I’d use it with a narrow lace trim in ivory.
I think I’ve already told this so many times but here we go again…I really like narrow stretch lace trims! They are cute and soft and go well with all types of lingerie (see some of my makes here). If you want to add them to the Hanna bralette pattern you can follow this tutorial on the blog (scroll down for the lace trim part of the tutorial). Basically you can use any stretchy material for your bralette (jersey knits, stretch mesh, power mesh, stretch velvet, rib knits…really, whatever you prefer as long as it’s stretchy at least in one direction) and you can add a narrow lace trim to it. Then you will treat the neckline pieces as it would be lace.
For my bralette I used the polka dot mesh and the ivory lace trim and I lined the bralette with ivory stretch mesh. I did this because the contrast of these colors was too much and I wanted the polka dot mesh blend in with the ivory mesh in order to have a more color coordinated look. As both of these fabrics are very lightweight the result is still quite delicate. If you would like to have a more supportive bralette you could line lightweight mesh with a jersey knit or with powermesh…your preferences, your fabric choices!
For the panties I used the Vera panties in view 2, as they were made out of lace. Again I used my mesh on a double layer and the narrow lace trim edge worked as a regular lace scalloped edge. There’s a tutorial about how to add these type of trims to panties here, but it’s only one of the ways you can sew them (and you can actually see another way to sew them on my second set of the month) and I do it when I’m using a knit pattern as a base.
Here I used the lace pattern as a base so I just added the lace trim to all the edges that call for scalloped lace edges. This example is actually more like the 6th tutorial that is included in the free e-book about sewing panties (grab yours here) as you would cut the fabric (in my case mesh) pieces on fold and then add the lace trim (you don’t need to cut your fabric two times like you would need to do with lace). For the front I actually sewed the lace trim in one pass, once I reached the center of the front piece I pivoted and folded the trim to continue sewing.
Details of the set
Patterns: Hanna bralette & Vera panties (version 2)
Supplies: polka dot stretch mesh & ivory stretch mesh from my stash, narrow lace trim + ivory findings from my shop
Tutorials:
Blog: How to sew the Hanna bralette with narrow lace trims
Free ebook: 2. Sewing with Lace Trims // 6. Knit + Lace Edges
I hope you liked this set, I hadn’t used a trim like this one for the Hanna bralette in a long time and I wanted to revisit the old tutorial to give you more ideas about how to use this pattern! While making this set I actually found another polka dot + narrow lace combination to use for the second set so I guess the theme for January is now official, hehe.
