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Emergency Camisole


Posted on July 4, 2025
Tags: madeof:atoms, craft:sewing, FreeSoftWear
A camisole of white linen fabric; the sides have two vertical strips of filet cotton lace, about 5 cm wide, the top of the front is finished with another lace with triangular points and the straps are made with another insertion lace, about 2 cm wide.

And this is the time when one realizes that she only has one white camisole left. And it’s summer, so I’m wearing a lot of white shirts, and I always wear a white camisole under a white shirt (unless I’m wearing a full chemise).

Not a problem, I have a good pattern for a well fitting camisolethat I’ve done multiple times, I don’t even need to take my measurements and draft things, I can get some white jersey from the stash and quickly make a few.

From the stash. Where I have a roll of white jersey and one of off-white jersey. It’s in the inventory. With the “position” field set to a place that no longer exists. uooops.

But I have some leftover lightweight (woven) linen fabric. Surely if I cut the pattern as is with 2 cm of allowance and then sew it with just 1 cm of allowance it will work even in a woven fabric, right?

Wrong.

I mean, it would have probably fit, but it was too tight to squeeze into, and would require adding maybe a button closure to the front. feasible, but not something I wanted.

But that’s nothing that can’t be solved with the Power of Insertion Lace, right?

One dig through the Lace Stash1 and some frantic zig-zag sewing later, I had a tube wide enough for me to squiggle in, with lace on the sides not because it was the easiest place for me to put it, but because it was the right place for it to preserve my modesty, of course.

Encouraged by this, I added a bit of lace to the front, for the look of it, and used some more insertion lace for the straps, instead of making them out of fabric.

And, it looks like it can work. I plan to wear it tonight, so that I can find out whether there is something that chafes or anything, but from a quick test it feels reasonable.

a detail of the side of the camisole, showing the full pattern of the filet lace (alternating Xs and Os), the narrow hem on the back (done with an hemming foot) and the fact that the finishing isn't very neat (but should be stable enough for long term use).

At bust level it’s now a bit too wide, and it gapes a bit under the arms, but I don’t think that it’s going to cause significant problems, and (other than everybody on the internet) nobody is going to see it, so it’s not a big deal.

I still have some linen, but I don’t think I’m going to make another one with the same pattern: maybe I’ll try to do something with a front opening, but I’ll see later on, also after I’ve been looking for the missing jersey in a few more potential places.

As for now, the number of white camisoles I have has doubled, and this is progress enough for today.


  1. with many thanks to my mother’s friend who gave me quite a bit of vintage cotton lace.↩︎

blog.trueelena.org/blog/2025/0…

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in reply to Elena ``of Valhalla''

this is soooooooooo pretty!!!
I like adding triangular side gussets to expand patterns - they’re more subtle and v comfy- but the lace is so PRETTY
in reply to soil gremlin

@soil gremlin here the problem was that even the bit at the bust level was a bit too tight to be able to get into the camisole, even if it was the right size for wearing it, so a triangular side gusset wouldn't have helped a lot; it really needed the elasticity of knits (or some buttons)

and also: lace! all the lace!

in reply to Elena ``of Valhalla''

ohhh yeah that makes sense. I do like knits but a woven cami is so NICE
in reply to soil gremlin

@soil gremlin yeah, I'm seriously considering either doing another one with buttons, or making a crochet yoke and then a rectangle for the body basically like this, but much shorter and without sleeves: sewing-patterns.trueelena.org/…

the latter sounds better, but is not going to be a quick project, because I'm extremely slow at crochet

in reply to Elena ``of Valhalla''

and now @Diego Roversi gave me back MY camisole that somehow ended up in his underwear drawer, and compared to this morning the number of white camisoles I have has *tripled*!

(I knew I had another one…)

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