Lingerie Exploits

I had a busy sewing weekend, but I am not going to post about it all at once.

The first piece I am revealing is my first piece of lingerie.

 

It’s a lacy, racy robe and a lot of fun. It was my first time sewing with lace. I discovered pretty quickly that I couldn’t use pins on this, but I just laid it flat and made sure the seams were straight. The fabric was actually rather difficult to sew with because of the inconsistency in the fabric.

Those flowers had a thick thread around them. Contrasted with the mesh in between, it made for some tough sewing. The whole thing still only took me a couple of hours of sewing on Saturday night.

I didn’t take a picture of them, but I tried out French seams for the first time. French seams, for those not in the know, are seams that enclose the raw edges of the fabric within the seam itself. They are a great way to deal with delicate fabric like lace and silk in order to prevent the fabric from fraying and to give the entire garment a professional look.

To give you more of an idea of what a French seam is, I have kindly borrowed Sew Sweetness’s wonderful illustration:

Except for the sleeves, all my seams are French seams. I may use this method more often. It really completes a garment. After sewing with lace, I can definitely see myself moving on to other challenging fabrics and using this method.

I didn’t use a pattern for this garment. I used an existing robe as the template. I will talk more about using existing clothes to make new clothes with another garment I made this weekend.

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