Category: Making Panties

Ideas and tutorials for making your own panties, to coordinate with your hand-made bras, or just to add to your collection!

Guess Who’s Featured in Seamwork Magazine!

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Big news: I’m one of three bra-making experts featured in a hot-off-the-digital-press article in Seamwork Magazine!

With insights from UK pattern designer Zoe Edwards, Amy Chapman (of Cloth Habit fame), and me, writer Jessica Yen focuses on making lingerie from scraps of fabric— something I love to do!* Included are tips on everything from choosing patterns strategically to make the most of irregularly-shaped scraps to my own ideas for working with color palettes.

The making of a bra
Wow, am I glad I obsessively save my scraps of beautiful silks and laces! They’re perfect for repurposing into custom lingerie. (Click the photo to go to my first post in the series on making this bra and a coordinating panty.)

I’d love it if you would visit Seamwork Magazine and read this article, along with the rest of February’s issue, which focuses entirely on intimates. And tell me what you think! Oh, and I’d be interested to hear about your own experiences with sewing lingerie from fabric scraps.

*See my posts on the second bra and panty I made (bra pictured above) for loads of details and tutorials.

The blatant self-promotional part: Want to see my own DIY lingerie sewing kits? I design and produce them for Colormusing, and many feature materials and trims I’ve dyed myself; all include links to blog posts I’ve written with details and tutorials specific to each kit.

And while you’re visiting Colormusing, be sure to sign up to receive Hue News, CM’s free monthly e-mail newsletter, including discount coupon codes you’ll only find in Hue News!

The Little White Project: A Brief Follow-up

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I know, I know, I said the Little White Project was over. But here’s the thing: Even after all the lengthy tutorials, the sewing, the dyeing, and the finishing, there are still some notes about making the Little White Bras/Panties/Thongs that didn’t make it into the previous posts. I feel, therefore, duty-bound to offer these tidbits here.

The Sewing Part: Little White Bras

  1. The main difference between the first one and the second is the materials used for the cups. The first has lace on the upper/center cup pieces; for the second (the colorblocked one), I used the same Swiss dot/cup lining combination for all the cup parts. This meant that I’d have to finish the top (neckline) edge of the cups, though, so I used foldover elastic for this. (Click here for my post that includes a tutorial on applying FOE.)
  2. The other major difference is in the bridge. For the first LWB, I unintentionally shortened the bridge by sewing a seam at the top of it; this created a gap between the top of the bridge and the top of the underwires— in other words, the wires extended up the center on either side of the bridge, past the top of the bridge. (Click here to see what I did about that little issue.)
  3. I also decided to put the elastic trim at the bottom of the bridge; because I’d measured and cut my trim before dyeing it, I double-checked the length to make sure I would still have enough for the rest of the bra. (Notes to self: Good thing I always cut a little extra. This looks great! Must do again!) When I look at the bra as a whole, this really helps to make all the colors and trim work cohesively.

    Changes to LWB2
    The sewing differences in my second LWB. (For this, I dyed the separate bra pieces before sewing them together.)

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Dye-IY & the Little White Project: The Final Chapter

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Yes, it’s that time. It’s the last part of my Little White Project, in which I’ll show you yet another approach to dyeing a bra and panty (okay, thong), using the same bra pattern (Kwik-Sew 3300), (mostly) same materials as the original Little White Bra, and the same 3 dye colors. But this time, I’m going to do something completely different with the dyes!

Before I get to that, here’s a quick recap of the various dyeing processes already done in this series:

  1. Dyed a finished panty in a single dyebath (combining equal parts of all 3 dye colors);
  2. Ombré-dyed a finished thong with a single dye color;
  3. Ombré-dyed a finished bra with 3 separate colors.

    Little White Bra/Panty/Thong
    My first 3 Little White projects. Clockwise from lower left: Panty dyed in all 1 color (3 dye colors mixed together), bra ombré-dyed with 3 colors, and thong ombré-dyed in 1 color. But wait— there’s more!

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Underwear… Or Not to Wear?

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Hand-made lingerie is a hot topic, no doubt about it. All over the world, bras and panties are being sewn, patterns are being tested and reviewed, advice is sought and given, and the results are being photographed, talked about, and blogged about. And yet I’ve seen very little mention of the actual wearing of our hand-made lingerie. (Maybe they really are unmentionables?) Yes, there is plenty of discussion of fit issues, sewing techniques, and pattern pros and cons, but what I mean is, are we really wearing the underwear we’re making? Or just making it?

Bra with coordinating panty
My second bra and panty set deserves a better fate than languishing in my lingerie drawer.

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Dye-IY: The Little White Panties That Were

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Now that I’ve made my Little White Panty and Little White Thong, I can’t wait to try out some of my dyeing ideas! If you’ve seen the results of dyeing my Little White Bra, you’ll know I used a dip-dyeing technique, with several colors, to create its beautiful ombré finish. This time, I’m going to do something different: the panty will be immersion-dyed in a mix of colors, and I’m going to dip-dye the thong with just 1 dye color. The kicker: I’ll be using some of the same dye colors as for my LWB, so these panties should coordinate well with the bra (fingers crossed).

The LWP, Before & After
No, it’s not Jekyll and Hyde, The Underwear Edition. It’s my Little White Panty, before and after dyeing!

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Dye-IY: The Little White Panty Project

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Remember my Little White Bra project, after it was dyed? Well, today is all about its coordinating Little White Panty! I’ll show you how I made it, along with a Little White Thong; in my next post, I’ll show you how I dyed them. (Teaser alert: I used 2 different techniques— but they both work with my ombré-dyed LWB!) And coming soon: I’ll show you 3 different ways to apply the same dye colors I used for all my Little White projects, so you can make a complete set of coordinating (not matchy-matchy) lingerie pieces!

Let’s start with the Little White Panty. You may recognize this pattern; it’s MakeBra’s DL21, the same one I used for my Ombré Panty. What a difference a fabric choice makes!

Before: Little White Panty
My Little White Panty was made with MakeBra’s DL21 pattern, with (as usual) some slight modifications. (Click the photo to go to this pattern on MakeBra’s site.)

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3 Things I’ve Learned from Sewing Bras

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I’ve been sewing since I was 5 years old, and have been making most of my own clothes since my pre-teen days. I remember making iconic items like tie-back flutter-sleeved tunic tops and satin newsboy caps for my school friends by the time I was in fifth grade. (Don’t judge me— it was the ’70s.)

But regardless of all my sewing experience, I’ve found that there is always something more to learn. And my recent venture into the previously unknown-to-me sewing territory of bra-making is proving to be no exception.

The making of a bra
I’ve learned a lot of new things about sewing since starting to make my own bras!

Here are 3 things I’ve learned from sewing bras.Read More »

Flash! Orange Lingerie Introduces 2 Panty Patterns!

Colormusing6 Comments

This just in: Orange Lingerie, the source of the beautiful pattern I’ve used for my first and second bras, has just released 2 sensational new panty patterns!

The first is called the Kingston Thong:

The Kingston Thong pattern
NEW: The Kingston Thong pattern from Orange Lingerie. Click the picture to see all the details in the Orange Lingerie shop. (Illustration is from Orange Lingerie’s pattern listing.)

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Shades of Excitement: An Ombré Panty!

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This project really is exciting— a gorgeous, reversible fabric that’s solid blue on one side, and black-to-blue ombré on the other, a new panty pattern, and it’s going to match my ombré foam-lined bra that I just finished!

Let’s get right to it! First, here’s a look at the fabric, a 95% nylon/5% Spandex matte jersey.

ombré fabric
My beautiful ombré matte jersey. Yes, it’s reversible— it’s solid blue on one side, ombré on the other!

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My Third Bra, Part 3: Making a Coordinating Bikini Panty

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Now that I’m finished making my third bra, I wanted to do a quick follow-up about the bikini panty I made to go with it. I’ve used the same pattern as for my thong, Kwik-Sew 3881, which includes a total of 4 styles; hipsters and briefs are the other two.

After making some fairly substantial changes in the bra pattern, I’ve decided (for once) to keep this panty simple: just coral poly/Spandex (the same fabric I used for the bra cups) and foldover elastic. Oh, and I saved one of the little flower thingies to use as an embellishment!

Panty materials
What I’m using to make the panty that will coordinate with my third bra. 1. 1 3/8″-wide foldover elastic (for waistband). 2. Poly/Spandex fabric. 3. 5/8″-wide foldover elastic (for legs). 4. Cotton knit (for crotch lining). 5. Flower embellishment. And Kwik-Sew 3881, View B (bikini).

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