Since I started my own personal, "January is Lingerie Month", I've been on a bend to replace nearly every stitch of my ready made underwear with me made.  

I bought some lovely red lace from Bravo Bella a few months ago, (which appears to be sold out now.)  I wanted to make up a pair of lace panties just to see how they would look and get a feel for working with lace fabric. 

I took a day and wandered, walked, photographed nature, and then read and sketched at a local cafe. Do you know, I felt so refreshed and recharged by that day of languish and lounging. I felt like I'd been on vacation in my own city. The city of Destiny, mind.  And that was the day I was tagged with #widrn and got to share the photo below. 

For the lace panties, I thought I'd go as sheer and lacy as I could.

At first, I attempted to sew the legs with clear elastic. Hello, that was a mistake. Talk about being eaten by your sewing machine! Yikes!  

Quick research and scour of my stash revealed a sweet tomato red lingerie elastic from Kathy (Fr8rain).  Whew! It matches. I'm rescued. 

To make the panties, I used my TNT, Jalie 2568.  While these look like they are briefs, they fit on my like bikinis. I also used a red cotton for the lining. ​

I tried them on and the clear elastic (which I left on one leg and just added the lingerie elastic over the top) does constrict the leg a little more than expected.  That was a good experiment. Seam ripping would have ruined the fabric and I would have needed to make the both leg openings higher - not desired. 

From the back, they look super fun, just like my sketch. Only to be revealed to a special someone... ;) 

Aren't they sweet? 

A couple years ago I bought this really lovely heavy weight knit with great recovery from Girl Charlee. I wanted to make a pair of cotton leggings for a wardrobe basic. Leave it to me to pick purple to be a basic! Sadly, I haven't found this knit from them again and in general, the fashion industry is making knits thinner and thinner due to increasing costs. So if you find a beefy knit, I recommend picking it up. 

I've made the sewing cake leggings as capris several times. They're affectionately called my Happy Pants. Usually because they make viewers of them as happy as me!  V1, V2, V3, V4 Capris, V5 Bike Shorts and also a heavily modified Ohhh Lulu. 

This time around, I wanted them to extend fully to my ankles. I also wanted them to be snug, but not revealing each and every bump and dimple.  When I followed the pattern instructions for drafting, they work out to be more of a zero ease garment than negative ease.  There were tons of wrinkles in the knees. I had no idea how to not have a wad of fabric each time I bent my knee.  Hmm, not quite what I wanted. So, they sat in my UFO pile for ages.

Until one day, I had the brilliant idea to lay my great fitting powerstretch fleece leggings against them and cut away (with seam allowances accounted for. When I did this, the bit I took off looked rather like a fish eye dart. It tapered to nothing at the crotch and was quite wide through the thigh and knee and calf, tapering again to the ankle. Pretty interesting, not what I would have thought, since my first incarnation had total curves to fit the curve of my body.  It's good to experiment and see how things actually need to work vs. how they do in your head. 

The results, are fabulous! I feel so good in them! SO GOOD!

No flaws showing here and they are a very snug fit! A few back of knee wrinkles, but not bad. They go away with a straight leg. Whereas the first incarnation they hung out, wrinkled even with a straight leg. The other neat part - I made the panties (Jalie 2563 on upcoming blog post) I wore under the leggings. How cool is it that you really don't see a panty line on a bikini style panty?

Can you tell the difference between these two photos, besides my pose? 

In one photo, I made everything except my shirt. 
​Now what's the other key difference? ;)