Tag: Structured Lingerie

Improving on Me-Made May

28/5/14

You may have spotted that I didn’t post very many photos from my Me-Made May escapades. This is partly because I mostly look like some kind of strange triangular bag lady (I like layers, and most of my clothes are comfortable-shaped), and partly because it turns out that I only wear about four outfits, over and over again, with very minor variations. How boring!

28/5/14

Towards the end of the month I made a last-ditch effort to wear some of the smarter clothes in my wardrobe, only to discover that when I put them on… well, suddenly they’re not so smart any more. This dress is now very firmly on the “waiting to be chopped up and turned into something that doesn’t look like a giant floral sack” pile. There’s just no point in wasting time and fabric making clothes that require waist shaping in order to look nice, when waist shaping isn’t something that I actually have myself. Although, having said that, my other vintage dress (also made from an Advance size 18½ pattern without alterations) fitted really well and looked lovely!

17/5/14

See? I still don’t have a waist, but the dress looks smart, not like a huge great cushion’s attacked me while I wasn’t looking. I think this is partly down to the fact that this dress has a smooth skirt rather than miles of pleats. (Also: not a selfie, vintage-style foundation garments, not layered with t-shirts and bloomers and giant boots on account of it being freezing at work.)

Lace crop top

Sadly, even if I did have the budget to wear lovely things from Kiss Me Deadly every day, the fibromyalgia simply wouldn’t allow it. But, the whole Me-Made May experiment did reveal that I am very much lacking in the Me-Made underwear department – despite the fact that I spent plenty of time and money on the London College of Fashion’s Structured Lingerie course back in 2011. I bought this lace when I came back, in a fit of enthusiasm, and it’s been untouched in a box ever since, along with a metre and a half of pink, and four metres of a prettier-than-it-sounds grey. This particular lingerie is about as unstructured as you can get (no wires, no fastenings, nothing), but I used a lot of the skills I learned on the course to make it. The pattern itself is from Sewing Lingerie, a Singer reference book, where it’s described as a “sleep bra”.

The wide stretch lace that I used to make this is actually really affordable, and comes in lots of different colours and patterns. If this one (and the pink one I’ve just finished, and the two or three grey ones I’m going to make next) turn out to be comfortable, I can feel a drawer full of these coming on before Me-Made May next year!

Structured Lingerie (Part Four)

Structured Lingerie

This is the fourth and final bra from the Structured Lingerie short course at the London College of Fashion.

It’s made from a pattern that I drafted from one of my own bras, which sadly had to be sacrificed for the occasion. Each of us had to unpick a bra in our own size, writing down the order that we’d taken it apart so that we’d know how to assemble the new one.

I got a little bit too ambitious with mine, making a few alterations to the style of the original bra. This turned out to mean that some mistakes crept in along the way, so this bra doesn’t actually fit as well as the other three.

My main mistake was to take my pattern from the foam cup rather than the fabric that had been covering it. This seemed like a good idea at the time, as I could make a more accurate pattern from the stable foam than from the stretchy fabric. Unfortunately I forgot to add the seam allowance to the bottom of the lower cup, which makes the bra smaller than it ought to be. This was compounded by an error in the boning – I hadn’t realised that the boning channels we were using at the College were quite a bit wider than the ones on the original bra. This took an extra few millimetres out of the bottom cup, making it even smaller!

Still, I have my pattern, I know what changes I need to make, and I think I have just enough fabric left over from the course to have another try.

All in all, I had an absolutely brilliant week!
The facilities at the college were absolutely excellent (I’m coveting an industrial bar-tacking machine), the tutor was very experienced and helpful, and I learned a lot of things that I can now put into practice as I continue in my mission to make fiddly things from awkward fabrics.

You can actually do an entire degree in underwear if you want to, but I’m currently extremely tempted by another of their short courses. The Lingerie Workshop is another full week, but this time concentrating on “the skills of traditional couture lingerie, especially the feminine 1930s bias-cut styles and other similar themes and updating these into 21st-century lingerie.”

Doesn’t that sound absolutely perfect?

Structured Lingerie (Part Three)

Structured Lingerie

This is the third bra from the Structured Lingerie short course at the London College of Fashion.

As you can see, this one is a much fuller style than the previous two. Despite also being an “industry standard” 34B, the cups were slightly roomier than the other styles.
This bra isn’t underwired – instead it has a “cradle” for support, which goes underneath and in between the cups. (The underwired styles have a little “bridge” piece that sits in between the cups.) The cups are made in two pieces which, like the first bra, allows for a scalloped or lacy edge at the top. The cradle and the the lower part of the cups are lined with stabilised nylon for reinforcement.
The wings are much deeper on this bra than the others, and this actually makes it really comfortable to wear. Despite its somewhat old-fashioned styling, having tried them all on, this is actually my favourite of all the bras I made on the course.

Structured Lingerie (Part Two)

Structured Lingerie

This is bra number two from the Structured Lingerie short course at the London College of Fashion.

The cups on this one are made from foam, a couple of millimetres thick, to make something resembling a t-shirt bra. You can’t easily buy the foam moulded cups that these are made from (unless you’re Marks & Spencer and want to order thousands at a time), so we learned how to join the foam pieces together without creating bulky seams, and then we covered them with a stretch fabric.

(This photo makes it look as though I’ve sewn the cherry fabric upside down, but I haven’t, honest!)

The wings on all the bras (that’s the bit that comes out from the sides and turns into the strap at the back) are made from plain white powernet. The elastic’s attached with a three-step zig-zag which I conveniently happen to have on my own sewing machine, which is nice, as that’s one of the things that makes a bra look more professionally made. This one just needs a little bow where the straps join to the cups, and it almost looks like the real thing!

Structured Lingerie (Part One)

Structured Lingerie

At the beginning of April I went to London for a week, to do the Structured Lingerie short course at the London College of Fashion. The aim of the week was to make three bras of differing styles, to an industry-standard size (34B). After that there would be the opportunity to take apart a bra of your own size, draft a pattern from it, and make a new one!

This is the first bra of the week – a lace underwired bra. Each cup is made from a single piece of lace, and darted to create shape. This means you can use fabrics with a scalloped edge, as you’re cutting a straight piece at the top of the cup. Pretty, isn’t it?