Black lace, beige lining, some contrasting FOE…and voila, here’s the first set of February (I know we’re in March, haha). This is a Mara bralette + Vera panties combination and I’m really happy with how this set turned out. And I’ve now also created a separate page here at the blog where you can see all the sets I’m making during this year.

I wanted to try out something with a lace overlay on top of a neutral background as I think that it’s a nice mix of different textures. To make this happen I just used the Mara bralette pattern as is, cutting all the pieces two times from power mesh and I then measured out the lace pieces that go on top of the mesh pieces. I say all the pieces because I also cut the front band out of a stretchy material even when the pattern calls for rigid lingerie lining with no stretch.

Can you swap non stretchy fabric for a stretchy one just like that? Well, the easy and short answer would be NO. Why? Because the pattern is drafted with the center piece intended to be stable and if it’s not stable it won’t give the same support as the patternmaker deigned the pattern for.

But the answer can also be DEPENDS. Why? Because you can do it if you want to…and basically you can do it if you are aware of the change this is going to produce. You see, the bramaking fabric world can be confusing, especially the part about linings. There are the non stretch linings and the stretchy linings…and I’d say that you should follow two rules/guidelines when talking about stretchy linings:

the back band should always be made out of a stretchy fabric. Otherwise you won’t be able to have an undergarment that will snugly fit to your body (unless you’re making a vintage style bra out of plain fabric + elastic…this is another story I’d say).
if your pattern asks for a stretchy fabric for the particular part of the bra/bralette, please use it. The pattern is drafted in a way that there’s stretch calculated inside the pieces and otherwise you will probably have fit issues. You can only get away with swapping a stretchy fabric for a non rigid fabric in this case if you have a small cup size and the stretch wouldn’t be “used” much anyway.

So, what happens if you use stretchy fabric instead of a non-stretch lining for the front band (or the cradle piece in other patterns) for the Mara bralette? You’ll have less support than intended when using this pattern. Is this bad? It depends…if you don’t have a big cup size it will technically not be such a big change, your overall band will just fit a bit looser and if it’s what you want, go for it.

If you have a bigger cup size and you’re aiming for more support you might not like this result. But you also might like it more than the original fit if you want a looser band. It all depends on YOU! Also it’s not the same if you use a rather sturdy power mesh fabric that gives quite a lot of support or when you use a lightweight stretch mesh that gives almost no support. Also, for this particular pattern, whatever you do, there’s the underwire channeling tape under the cups and this will still stabilize the front band even when it’s not lined with a rigid lining.

Is this confusing? I bet, haha. Basically I just want to point out that you can many times swap fabrics but you first have to know how things work out together and WHY a particular type of lining is chosen for a specific bra piece. You can almost always swap a rigid lining with a stretchy one and you’ll have a wearable result (maybe not the most supportive one of course, it really depends on your particular experiment). But it’s not very common that you can swap the fabrics the other way around. That’s why adding foam (non stretch bramaking foam) to a pattern with stretch fabric cups is only reasonable in small cup sizes (I’ve written about that in my Hanna and Mara foam instructions).

You might ask why I’m even writing about it, everyone should just go and use whatever they were told by the pattern instructions, right? Well, the pattern is a starting point, you can tweak it any way you want once you have enough knowledge to do so…that’s the cool part of custom sewing projects. Maybe you don’t have all the specific supplies in hand, maybe you don’t have the same color for both linings, maybe you want a looser fit…there are so many possible scenarios. But once you understand these bramaking “principles” you can make your own decisions. It’s kind of like cooking…there are these core values you have to respect but then again you can play around with lots of components if you understand what you are actually doing. And like in cooking, the result can be a good one…or not, haha! Experiemnting with different materials is the only way to see what’s your favorite way to sew any garment (well,this and reading and learning from others mistakes too, haha).

So, after telling you about all the lining choices, why did I choose to do it this way, using only the stretchy lining (powermesh)? Definitely it was not because I wanted to write about it here, haha…altough it turned out to be a good excuse for some theory that I think might interest new bramakers maybe?!

Mainly I had two reasons and the first and the more important one was that as I was going to leave it uncovered to have this black lace contrast effect, I wanted to have everything in the exact same color. And my rigid lingerie lining has a tiny bit different shade so I didn’t want to have it visible for the front band.

And the second reason is that I’m an AA cup…it really does not matter what I use because well, I don’t really need almost any support (one good thing about having a small cup size at least!). Now…if you’d like to do the same pattern modification but you do need the support, you can always also use a layer of sheer rigid lining for the center front, it’s very lightweight and you can have it as a second or even a third layer!

To cut out the lace pieces I kind of eyeballed the whole thing but if you want to do something like this I’d actually use a separate new lace pattern for every piece. To do so just mark a line where you’d like your lace pieces to end. It’s easier to do that if you put together your pieces and put the lace on top of them to first see a bit how the result would look. I’m kinda terrible at sketching things first so I just eyeball the lace position and sometimes it turns out well and other times it doesn’t, haha. Another good idea would be to mark the 6 mm (1/4in) seam allowances as when you cut lace it’s better to align the pieces well according to the SA in order to have nicely matching lace pieces (the point where the SA inner edge touches the lace should be in the lower part of one of the scallops in order to have pieces matching up neatly once you sew them together).

The only thing that was maybe more “elaborated” was that I wanted the lace edge to continue the cup piece position going all the way until the band so in order to have it going in the same direction I needed to cut the front band piece in two (not like the original pattern that’s cut on fold). Otherwise I could not have used the lace edge in a way I wanted to. It’s actually easy and you only have to join the two lace pieces and then just continue as you would normally.

Once all the pieces were cut out I first joined lace pieces with their corresponding layer of mesh pieces with a 2 width 2 length zig zag stitch following the lace edge. This was now my exterior layer and the rest of the construction was done in the same way as usually. I used black wide 20 mm fold over elastic for all the edges. Again, FOE on the lower band edge does not provide lots of support, I’d use a plush back lingerie elastic instead if I wanted to have a more supportive result. By the way, the double layer of power mesh gives a really nice supportive fit for the bralette, it really depends so much on the fabrics you use!

And for the panties I used the Vera panties pattern in version 3. The strap elastic detail looks super cute together with the contrast theme of the bralette. Also as the powermesh for the front panel is not very stretchy, this version of Vera panties works nicely to balance out the lack of stretch with the adjustable straps.

As I already said I really like the result of this pattern hack! I’m all about experimenting with the base pattern to try out new variations and I already have another Mara hack in mind…maybe for the next month! In the meanwhile you can check out the Mara sewalong page for the longline lace tutorial, foam instructions and knit fabric modification. And Mei also made a quick tutorial about hacking this pattern into a cute camisole top!