No Stopping Me Now - Orange Lingerie Lansdowne and Blossom4Binky

A rather selfish weekend of sewing but I have so many beautiful kits stacked up I just had to use one of them. So as we head into Autumn I thought I would use the strikingly colourful kit from CosturaSecretShop. Then I had to decide what to make with it. Orange Lingerie has just released the new Lansdowne bra pattern so that decision was made. Then Evie la Luve posted a fabulous Blossom set on Instagram and having bought the add on pattern as soon as it came out it was time to give it a try. Feeling quite smug for a number of reasons.

I have made all the other Orange Lingerie patterns using the same size but as the Lansdowne is a partial band bra I thought I would make my usual paper cup and check. I really like the fact that the PDF pattern has a set of pieces for each size and that the seam allowances are marked. I just cut off the seam allowances and tape together along the cup seam. Looked fine.

The positioning of the lace is made easy as the seam allowances are marked and you can see exactly where the lace will join the bridge and where the strap ring will be attached. I lined with a nude bra tulle from my stash and used clear elastic to stabilise which I attached using a three step zigzag.

Then I had some decisions to make. The kit came with white sheer lining, nude picot elastic, blue strap elastic, black powernet and a black fastener. I hadn’t really picked up on the coral from the pictures I had seen of makes from the kit. I really love the contrast of the coral and the blue and remembered ordering some notions from Madalynne. Wow! So I swapped the elastics.

The outer cup requires stable fabric but as the scuba has some stretch in one direction I lined with the white sheer lining to stablise. This also meant I could enclose the cup seam for a neater finish. I decided against using the fabric for the band as thought this would be too much and used some navy powernet from my stash rather than the black from the kit. Rather than overlock the band to the side band, which creates bulk, I just did two rows of straight top stitching to keep in place. This is fine with scuba which doesn’t fray.

On to the band elastic and the usual dilemma when using different colour elastic and fabric. What colour thread to use? So I did the first pass in beige/nude which blends into the coral really well. However, the colour wasn’t good enough for the contrast on the navy powernet. So had the blue on top and kept the beige in the bobbin, sewing the second pass with the fabric right side up. Also, for a better colour match I used navy duoplex for the lining of the bridge. As with my previous partial band I attached the bands and bridge in one go, sewing from one side of the cup to to the other, to leave a guide for attaching the channeling. Looking pretty.

Applied the channeling as with the previous make. The photo shows how I mark the channeling once the first pass has been done. Once the second pass has been done I applied some iron on seam tape to the end of the elastic to provide stability for the ring attachment. Easier and less bulk than sew on.

I still couldn’t make my mind up about the strap elastic as the coral was a little narrow but looked so much better. I chose the coral and then switched to rose gold findings. Before applying the strap elastic I checked the fit of the fastener. As I had used slightly narrower elastic I had to shave some off the band to fit. As always I reshape the bands pinned together so exactly the same.

Bra finished and on to the Blossom4Binky. The big issue I had was how I was going to cut out the scuba neatly. Then I had a brain wave. I would see if my Cricut Maker could cut the fabric. No setting for scuba but thought I would try the spandex setting. I made a little design with half circles and watched carefully as the rotary blade cut a perfect circle. So next it was how to get the design into Circut Design Space. I played around taking pictures of the pattern piece, uploading and trying to clean up. Unfortunately this was not good enough as this didn’t give clean edges. So I spent a very worthwhile Saturday morning googling and came up with a free package called Inkscape. I opened the PDF in the program and basically traced using the Bezier pen. You make straight lines from point to point and then shape the curves. Amazing, within a short while I had an SVG file for the Cricut. When I opened in Cricut I had to resize as some SVGs do not import the correct size. Easily done and a perfect cut!

For the main front I used a stretch mesh I bought in the same order from CosturaSecretShop. I used temporary spray adhesive to keep in place whilst I sewed very carefully around the scalloped edge. It was really hard to see the edge in places but I went really slow. I then enclosed the front seam between the gusset and gusset lining. I even pattern matched the gusset so well you can’t see the join in the picture.

I used the lace for the back. The Binky has two options - full back and half back. The lace wasn’t quite wide enough for the full back. So to make life easier I just used a scrap of fabric behind the lace and used a small zigzag stitch along the scalloped edge. Then I trimmed the fabric back to the stitching. Just the elastic to apply. I didn’t have enough coral for both waist and leg so used the coral on the waist and the blue on the leg.

I know the Binky fits well but this Blossom version is gorgeous. It just looks fantastic with the Lansdowne. The fit and shape of this bra is all I expected from Orange Lingerie. With all the new skills where do I go next!