Close up of the garter clips. I like the touch of red.

It took me another 4 hours on Saturday to finish this one, and it’s far from perfect, but I’m so glad it’s done! I made this “torselet” (I can’t find a good English word for it… any suggestions?) as part of my lingerie sewing course. It’s made exactly to my measurements and fits quite nicely, but I’m not sure if I’ll really wear it a lot.

The sewing gave me quite a bit of grief at points. For example, there’s only boning in some of the boning channels, because even though I thought I stitched perfectly accurately along the sides, the boning would JUST NOT FIT.

Anyway, I’m happy that I have finally sewn something again. And now I have an ironing board in my new house, working on all those other things will be a lot easier!

The underwires sit beautifully. I will probably finish the thing off with a nice red bow to echo the garter clips.

The back isn’t super interesting, but oh well. The solid black part is the only part of the whole bodice that stretches. It’s kind of a pain to get it closed up, but it looks quite good.

I’m staying in Amsterdam this week to make dinner etc. for my little sister, and that made a trip to Kantje Boord a little quicker than it would be from Utrecht. Unfortunately that also means that I don’t have my camera on me, and although my phone has a decent camera what looks pink in the photos is in fact a neon-coral kind of colour. I bought lace, lycra and all other supplies to make a bra and at least two or three panties. Impatient as I am, I really wanted to start something, but I don’t have my pattern drawing book or my chart with measurements with me.

As usual, the internet came to my rescue. Last week, Melissa from Fehr Trade posted a free PDF pattern for a “lacey thong”. Normally I loathe PDF patterns because of all the sticking together, but luckily thongs aren’t very big. I’m usually between Burda sizes 36-38 in my hips, so I cut out an M. In the end I took it in by about 3 cm in total because it was rather loose. On a next version, I’ll probably also take out about 1,5 cm from the crotch length, because it doesn’t sit as nicely as I’d hoped.

Putting together this tiny pair of panties caused much swearing and sighing. Absolutely NONE of that is the pattern’s fault. I’m so used to using patterns without a seam allowance, that I instantly stopped thinking when I saw that the seam allowance was included. However, because my picot elastic is 1 cm wide instead of 0,6 cm (1/4″) I should have added some more seam allowance so I could have aligned the elastic with the raw edge. Now I had to mark te seam line and align the elastic to that, which proved to be much more fiddly than necessary.

One thing I chanced in the sewing of the undies, is leaving the crotch lining free in the back. This is absolutely no problem, because the picot elastic will hold it in place. I didn’t sew it between the back and the crotch pieces because otherwise it’d get too bulky for that tiny width. If I make another one, I’ll put the back piece and the crotch piece together for the outside to eliminate any seams in that area (which obviously just a euphimism for “between my butt cheeks”)

Final Verdict: Great little pattern, I’m probably going to make quite a few more! The only wise piece of advice I have about it, is check your elastic against the seam allowance!