Babydoll

The February challenge over at Bra-maker's Supply was a Baby Doll. 

This reminded me that I had a length of stretch silk georgette in my stash that I bought (possibly 8 years ago), with plans to make a Baby Doll.  Not because I wear Baby Doll style pyjamas, but because I was working my way through the drafts in Kristina Shin's "Pattern-making for Underwear Design".  Whilst I can't submit this in the Bra-maker's challenge because I have not used a Pin-up Girl's pattern, the challenge did give me the motivation to dig this project out and complete it.

Here is my finished Baby Doll.  You can see that it is much longer than a Baby Doll.  I decided I was more likely to wear it as a slip, so I lengthened it to above the knee.

Bra-making is always a good mental challenge, as there are lots of components.  I have a stash of supplies, but they often don't match up to a project, so I have to figure out a way to make my stash work for me.  This often means changing the construction techniques as well.  It is always tempting to go on-line and buy more supplies, but I'm finding that I have perished elastics in my stash, so obviously I am better off using what I have before it goes off than buying any more.

Initially, this project was going to be all black.  I had lots of black components, but my strapping was too wide, the power mesh very stiff and the hook and eye was poor quality.  Whilst I don't expect to wear this often, I do want it to last a long time, so I wanted to use quality components.  I was using a black and beige lace, so I decided to have beige straps.  I found that a beige under fabric showed off the lace better than black.  You can see that I switched from black thread on the floral part of the lace to beige thread.

I used beige power mesh and after vacillating for a while, went with beige elastic instead of black.  Initially I used a black picot elastic to finish the skirt keyhole opening, but it didn't sit flat so I unpicked it and went with a narrow hem instead.  The fabric behaved really well for hemming, both on this opening and the bottom hem.  On the bottom hem, I used the technique of triple stitching to make the hem....one row of stitching around the hem, fold it up and stitch a second round, fold this up and do the final hem stitching.

I used detachable straps, so I can easily switch to a cross-back or halter style.  The straps were ready made from an old bra, so I didn't even need to make them.  Bonus!

This close-up shows such more construction details.  I used a lightweight beige tulle to support the lace.  The bottom band elastic is a wide beige foldover elastic sewn over the seam allowance and then stitched down, so that the seam allowance of the black skirt does not show through the beige power mesh at the back.

The bra pattern for the top of the Baby Doll is one I self-drafted years ago, based on the 3 piece foam cup in section "3.3 The two-dart full cup lace bra pattern" of Shin's book.  Only I should make note that I need to add some height to the CF of the bra, as my full wires did not fit well and I ended up using my 3/4 wires.  It is a good style choice when you want to utilise the edge of some lace.

Bras are some of my favourite things to sew.  I think this is because of all the extra design decisions and thinking about construction that happens along the way.  I also love how you end up with a product that looks almost impossible to construct, even though it doesn't take so very long to make.