Set of the Week: Magenta Lace for Valentine's Day

Even though my valentine is far away this year, I made myself a pretty (and comfortable!) magenta lace set for Valentine's Day!

Patterns

Iris Bralette in Front D (with modifications)/Back H
Elodie Briefs in Style A

Fabrics

Iris Bralette: When I was looking through my stash, I realized that some of my recent purchases matched in color almost perfectly.  I bought some dazzle tricot from Fabric and Sewing, and while it has too much stretch (40% width) for an underwire bra, I thought it would work for my Iris Bralette pattern. From the same vendor, I also bought a stretch lace fabric, and it just happens to match the dazzle fabric perfectly.  The lace has quite a bit of stretch as well (60% width, 40% length), so I knew this bralette would not be very supportive, and would be just a fun lounge bra.  I wanted to keep the cups looking sheer, so I used a beige stretch mesh for the lining.  Lastly, the light pink power net is from Spandex World.

Elodie Briefs: I like to use natural fibers for my undies, so the polyester dazzle tricot was a no-go.  As luck would have it, I had some cotton/lycra jersey in my stash from Nature's Fabrics that was also an almost perfect match to the lace fabric.  Go figure! 

Trims

Iris Bralette: I've been seeing some bras and bralettes using fold over elastic to make the straps and I wanted to try it out.  I saw a cool post on Tailor Made Shop's IG about using clear elastic to increase the strap support.  Unfortunately, my FOE was just a little too narrow to use my 1/4" clear elastic, so I went without.  The straps do seem to stretch too much, so next time I will definitely use something to provide more stability.  The back strap elastic is a small leftover piece of 1/2" light pink elastic from Tailor Made shop.  The FOE and beige bottom band elastics are from Sew Sassy.

Elodie Briefs: The leg openings are finished with the same FOE as the bralette, and the waist uses a 1" jacquard picot elastic from Lace Heaven.  

Style Notes

Iris Bralette: I did a bit of hacking on this style to experiment, as you can see in my doodle below.  I wanted to try two things: continue the neckline and underarm FOE elastics and turn them into double straps, and create underlay pieces to have some nipple coverage behind the lace cups.

I used the lace overlay pieces for Front D, but I made them about 1" shorter at the top edge.  The original lace overlay pieces extended almost to the top of the cup, and that was a bit overkill for what I needed. 

​I basted the dazzle tricot pieces behind the corresponding lace cup pieces in the seam allowances, and left the top edges unfinished.  

I continued sewing the bralette as usual, being sure to leave a 9" extension of the FOE for each strap, and making the FOE "kiss" at the top of the cup to be sure that all raw edges were covered. Here's a very closeup photo of the cup for the details:

I also used 9" of strap elastic for the back strap pieces, and at the end this proved to be too long for me.  I typically need much less strap than is usually called for in a pattern, so that just has to do with my particular shape. ​

On this project I didn't go to the trouble of changing my threads while sewing the bottom band elastic to match each of the fabrics (like I did for my longline bralette hack), and, yes, you can really see my wonky stitching on the back band pieces.  Well, that's what I get for being lazy!

Elodie Briefs: I didn't really experiment too much here, just sewed Style A and followed the instructions for Style B when sewing on the wide waist elastic.  

That's it for this set!
​Have you made something special for Valentine's Day?