Orange Lingerie’s Marlborough Bras and Evie La Luve’s Evie Knickers

As you know, I love sewing lingerie, garments and home decor. About a year ago I discovered that I also enjoy drawing and painting with watercolors. I began learning to draw and watercolor by using books from the library and sketching and painting as much as possible. With this new love for art, I found myself torn between two loves, sewing and painting. When I was doing one, I wanted to do the other. One morning last winter I awoke with the knowledge that I must try my hand at designing fabric using my artwork. With the help of books and the internet, I learned the ins and outs of designing fabric. A big part of this was learning to use Photoshop and understanding how to manipulate my artwork to make patterns and repeats. The fabric shown in this blog post is my first design. To start, I painted a total of four ranunculus flowers that I found growing on the roadside near my home in Martinez, California. I started by painting a pink ranunculus, and then a red, orange and yellow flower followed. Each ranunculus painting is 11″ x 9″.  As of today, I’ve designed fabric with the red and pink ranunculus on black and white background. One design, which is shown in the picture below, has one and a half inch flowers and is perfect for lingerie, dresses and garments. I had the designs printed by Spoonflower Fabric and I couldn’t be happier with the results. The fabric I used for this lingerie is satin. Spoonflower offers 33 types of fabric and this design can be printed on any of them.

This is what one of the watercolor ranunculus paintings looks like.

I also have fabric designs with five inch ranunculus for home décor, such as the duvet shown below, or garments, like blouses or dresses. This fabric is cotton sateen.

Orange Lingerie’s Marlborough Bra

This was my first time making the Marlborough bra so I started by making a toile to confirm fit. I made this from satin that I found at my local fabric store, Stonemountain and Daughter Fabrics in Berkeley, California.

I highly recommend making a toile to confirm fit when making a bra. In this case, the toile fit very well. The only change I made was to lengthen the strap connections. So my next step was to make the bra. I’ve made many underwire bras before, so this construction was straight forward. I made the bra with the same fabric as the toile. The lace was also from Stonemountain Fabrics.

I love the way my first Marlborough bra turned out!

Next I ordered a Marlborough bra-making kit from the Tailormade Shop located in New York City.  If you haven’t made bras before, I highly recommend ordering a kit so that you have all of the parts and pieces you need to start with. The only thing that kits do not usually come with are the underwires, which are purchased separately. The Tailormade Shop sells very nice bra-making kits specifically for the bras patterns designed and sold by Orange Lingerie. Their products are always of the highest quality.

Finally, I made the Marlborough using my new fabric in satin. I love the look and feel of a satin bra and the method that Spoonflower uses to print on synthetics results in absolutely luscious and saturated colors. Below is a picture of all of the pieces and findings, with the exception of the bra lining, for the Marlborough bra cutout using a rotary cutter. This lace is from Stonemountain and the findings, elastics and lining are from the Tailormade Shop.

This bra came together quickly. Because the bra is lined, I was able to hide all of the seams. The inside is very neat.

Evie La Luve’s Evie Knickers

I was looking for a panty pattern for woven fabric and happened upon the Evie La Luve Evie Knicker pattern during a trip to Stonemountain Fabrics. It was in the half-price bin, which made it a great find!

I was very pleased with this pattern. These panties fit me well and this pattern is now a favorite.

I am so pleased with out this these bras and panties turned out. I highly recommend both patterns. I’d love to hear your feedback!  Please scroll to the bottom of this post and you’ll find a comments section. Merci beaucoup and au revoir!