Sewing a blue lace bra and panties

I‘m sure that you have had instances when all of your sewing projects seem to be “stuck”. My coat project needs serious sleeve fitting that is the most difficult part of the project. Then I have a skirt project in which everything seems to go wrong from cutting some pieces off-grain to seaming wrong pattern pieces together. I decided to take a break and do some lingerie sewing to give my mind a rest. So I got my Pin-up Girls Alyssa pattern and two panty patterns: Megan Nielsen Acacia underwear and Evie la Lùve Frankie and started constructing a set of blue lace bra and panties.

The bra

I have made the Alyssa bra before. This time I continued experimenting with the pattern. I had found a big piece of this beautiful navy blue stretch lace from the Recycling centre and I decided to cover my whole bra in it.

Constructing the cup

The black foam cups that I had suited well with the blue lace. The black peeks nicely through the lace and it doesn’t matter that it’s not the same colour as the lace. 

Just like before, I pinned the lace on the cup with the scalloped edge at the top and constructed a dart to remove the excess fabric. I zigzagged the bottom edge on and fastened the scalloped edge from a few places. I added the black stretch lace to add a bit extra character.

I happened to have just the right shade of blue FOE in my stash, which was perfect for finishing the sides of the cups:

Constructing the band for the lace bra

With the band, I decided to combine the Pin-up girls Alyssa pattern with the methods I learned on when I tested the MakeBra online course.

Pin-up Girls patterns have bands that are constructed in two parts. The front band is made of a stable fabric with no stretch and the wings have all the stretchiness. MakeBra patterns have a band that goes all the way around and the front of the band is stabilized with a separate stabilizing fabric. 

I joined the Alyssa front and back bands together. I wante to save the pretty scalloped edge so placed the scallops on the top of the wings and therefore had to add a centre front seam to my lace. (Note that my lace is a little bit lower at the wings, I’ll explain that later.) My stretch lace was too fragile to be used just by itself so I layered it with black powernet that I cut on fold. Then I added a small piece of stabilizing fabric to keep my cups in place:

I finished the top edge between the cups and zigzagged the three layers together at the bottom. Then I could attach the bottom elastic.

Now, how to finish the top and still preserve the scallops? This is done by attaching the upper elastic only to the powernet. The after the elastic has been turned to the wrong side, the lace is zigzagged on top of it. The result looks like this:

And from the wrong side:

Bringing it all together

Now the construction continued with sewing the cups to the band and adding the underwires. Then it was time to add the straps. 

I do not like the thick fabric straps that many bra patterns have. I do not really need the extra support so I decided to use the strap elastic for both front and back straps. However, I wanted to add a bit of decoration and I had a plenty of black stretch lace left. This is what I did:

I zigzagged the lace on top of the front straps! (Yes, I could have switched into black thread but I didn’t.)

Then it was a matter of just inserting the straps and the back closure. I stitched the front of the straps to the ends of the FOE that I had left for that purpose. Then I folded the seam allowance down and bar-tacked through the cup to keep the straps firmly in place. To hide the bar-tack, I made two black bows out of black ribbon:

I finished the bra by sewing on a little charm that I got from Pure Lady at the centre front.

I am really happy with the finished lace bra. This is how it looks from the back:

The panties

This time I was determined to make a whole set. No more mismatched bras! I had just bought the Frankie panties pattern by Evie la lùve and now was a perfect opportunity to test the pattern.

I had some navy blue viscose jersey in my stash so I used that as a main material for the panties. Then I added the lace to the back. However, my lace was a bit too narrow to cover the back pattern completely. So, this is what I did (there is a picture with the Acacia panties of the back!): I placed the lace with the scalloped edges to the side edges of the back pattern and cut the both halves of the back from the lace. Then I sewed the centre back seam of the lace and zigzagged it. After narrowing the seam allowances. I placed my V-shaped lace construction on top of the viscose jersey and pinned the top of the “V” to the jersey. I cut the pinned smaller V-shaped piece out carefully, without removing any of the pins and then zigzagged the lace on the viscose jersey. Finally, I finished the back by carefully removing any extra jersey from the scalloped edge of the “V”.

Then, I used the FOE to finish the leg openings and the top edge. I think I read something wrong here, since I think that I should have cut my FOE a bit shorter at the leg openings. I cut it 3 cm shorter but then after I had finished the leg openings I read “4 cm” somewhere in the instructions. As the Frankie instructions have options for several different styles and I kept browsing back and forth, I may have confused myself. Anyway, I left the leg openings like that since they will be okay when worn. I finished the panties with a little black bow.

I was still a bit annoyed with the FOE problems, so I went back to my previously used Acacia pattern that I had already modified to fit me perfectly. For this, I decided to use more of that black stretch lace instead of FOE. For the legs I just fastened it with one row of zigzag. With the waist, I added another black zigzag row at the top. I stretched the lace just a tiny bit while sewing and it lays nice and flat.

I did the back exactly the same way as I did with the Frankie panties above and finished similarly with the bow:

So, here is the whole completed set:

I am really happy with it! I still need some practice in panty-making but I think that the bra looks great. It also fits really nicely. I cut the wings really snug so that when it stretches in use I hope I don’t need to shorten them anymore like I had to do with some of my first makes.

I hope you liked this post and got inspired to make your own lacy bra! 

Happy sewing!

Katja