I will be honest that I'm sort of shocked that I'm writing this review. The Emerald Erin Black Beauty Bra is probably one of the better known bra patterns on the market, but it tends to cater towards the smaller size ranges. I didn't think I would ever be able to fit, so I'd been ignoring the pattern in favor of other brands that extend into larger size ranges.

I can't believe this is the last post of the year! December has flown by, and while I'm ready to bid 2025 farewell, I can't say that I'm entirely ready for 2026 to be here. But in any case, December was quite a busy month both in and out of the sewing room, so here's a recap of a bunch of things that have been sewn but not blogged.

This year has felt like periods of intense sewing business at the ends, with a whole lot of not much happening in the middle. I don't even have a good sense of how much I've made, so this year's wrap up post should be an interesting review for me! Let's jump in to my look back at sewing in 2025:

I'm trying to continue my tradition of looking at both sewing and non-sewing year end reviews on the blog, though I feel like the non-sewing review is becoming less and less interesting each year. When I look back at last year, I will say that there was a certain prophetic note to what I wrote about making goals for 2025: "

I've been buying the BRAdvent Boxes from Bra Builders the past two years (2023 and 2024) and it's become a fun tradition for me and my sister to open daily packages and share pictures with each other. This year since she was visiting home for the holidays, we were able to open some packages together and we ended up with quite the bounty of bra sewing supplies.

I made McCall's 8340 last year as an emergency pivot for a masquerade wedding, and it seems to be the kind of pattern that comes in clutch, because I made it as a backup pivot for a different kind of masquerade event again this year. My sister and I went to an experiential theater performance in New York and the dress code was quite strict with black, white, and silver being the only allowed colors.

I sewed this dress back in October, but it's taken me a while to get around to blogging about it. Black fabric is notoriously difficult to photograph, and if I''m being honest, this didn't end up being a favorite project of mine, so the desire to show it off was also quite subdued. But I do want to try and get everything I've made this year on the blog before we roll into 2026, so here we go.

This post has probably been more than a year in the making, and at another time would have been scattered over several posts. But I'm trying to get as much from my draft queue posted by the end of the year as I can, so today we are getting one epic blog post all about sewing men's underwear. If you plan to stick around for such a think you may need cookies; consider yourself warned.

I made the LilyPAD Lusamine a while ago during one of the Bra Sewing Bees when I was still really trying to work out how to best fit a bra. At the time I was happy with how it looked, but the fit was never really perfect. I was in the middle of that spiral of not having a good starting point to measure from, so all of my measurements were wildly all over the place, and I started from the largest size pack, but ended up adjusting the pattern a lot to get it to fit.

The LilyPADesigns Lazulite bra was released earlier this year, right around the time that I decided I wanted to do a deep dive into fitting a bunch of the LilyPAD patterns. When it came out I was enamored with it - it's such a pretty design with a lot of fun design options. I've been super excited to try it, and I'm really happy I finally got around to making it!

Continuing on with my LilyPADesigns pattern round up, I'm finally moving on to the pattern that sent me down this rabbit hole back in March of this year. While I was working on my presentation for the Bra Bee, I took a look at a bunch of different cups and how they are shaped. From that analysis, the LilyPAD Labellum really stuck out as having a cup shape that seemed like it would be a really good fit for me.

Continuing on from my most recent post, I've got another LilyPADesigns underwear pattern to review today. This post is probably going to be me spending way too long talking about the world's simplest sewing project, but that's sort of the vibe of this blog, so, it's kind of par for the course. Anyway, today let's take a look at the other LilyPADesigns underwear pattern, the Kisa Knickers.

I was scrolling on Instagram and I saw someone bring up their end of year WIP purge. While I don't really have a lot of true WIPs lying about, I have been wanting to do a deep dive on the LilyPADesigns patterns since April, and I do have quite a few planned projects that have been hanging out on the cutting table for far too long.

Somehow despite being a rather busy month I actually got a decent amount of sewing done in November! Blogging about it... Not so much, but hopefully I can get some more detailed posts about my most recent projects up soon. The early winter darkness and rainy weather hasn't made photography a super fun prospect, but I'm hoping to get photos done soon.

October is the first month in a long while where I haven't had at least one weekend of travel, and it has been really nice to be at home, though it does feel like the month has gone by very quickly and that I haven't been able to get as much done with the time at home as I would have hoped.

I think this is the part of writing this blog where I tap the mic to see if it's still on and blow heartily to clear away the dust and cobwebs. It's been and continues to be a crazy year (for so many reasons), and I must admit I have largely let sewing fall by the wayside. But I've started doing some early morning sewing sessions, and it's amazing how much you can get done with slow and steady progress.

I did get more sewing done in September than in August, but not as much as I would have hoped. I got a few things done, but not any pictures yet, and I've got one WIP that with any luck should finish up next month. Sewing Progress I finally started on what I'm calling the great LilyPAD patterns comparison project. I finished up pattern alterations last month, and started on the first project I'm making with these patterns - the Lamina.

I thought August would be the month I got back to sewing, but it wasn't as much as I had hoped. This month feels like it has been flying, and I've been trying to get caught up on other things, so the sewing has been pretty minimal. Sewing Progress My limited sewing time has been dedicated to pattern alterations and testing the patterns that have been on the cutting table for *checks notes* three months.

I fell into the world of style typing systems several years ago, and since then it seems that the internet has become even more obsessed with them, and with the idea of finding your "personal style." Although this concept really isn't new, it's been interesting watching newer authors and creators expand systems that were previously based primarily on the body structure or facial essences into something that tries to be based a bit more on personal taste.

Like June, July has been a rapid and busy month. I feel like I've barely been home, and had no time or inclination towards sewing even when I was. It's been overall a good month for me on a personal level - I've been able to see a lot of friends and do a lot of things, but not much in the way of sewing or crafting.

June has flown by. It's been an incredibly busy month, which has been fun, but it also feels a bit like I'm just trying to hold on for the ride. No sewing to report, though I have been reading some new books I hope to review on the blog soon. This is going to be a really short check-in post, because I just haven't had a lot of time to do anything sewing related this month.

I... honestly can't even really believe it's the end of May. It didn't seem like it while I was going through it, but now that I'm a bit more caught up with reality it feels like I lost a lot of time to the vortex of jury duty. This month has been busy, and the start of the summer intensity has commenced, so I didn't feel like there was too much sewing to share, but then I realized all the projects that were started last month were finished this month, so, that's not exactly true.

I posted my review of the AFI Elegance Bra a while back, but at the time I noted that I wasn't entirely pleased with the fit of the bra because the upper cup was just a bit tight. I've gone back to remake the pattern and test my theory that a stretch upper cup would give a better profile under a tighter fitting top.

I reviewed the patterns I used in the Bee on a Wire class (the PUG Freja, the PUG Ruby, the AFI Elegance, and the La Bella Coppia Josey) a few months ago on the blog. I had always intended to make matching bottoms for each of these, but, as I discussed in my March and April…

I posted my book review of David Kibbe's Power of Style after I finished reading the book a few months ago. I wanted to get my review up reasonable quickly after I'd finished reading the book, but in my review I did note that although I had some criticisms of the book, and felt that I had finally "found" myself in the system with the Soft Dramatic Image Identity, I was still interested in trying out the exercises and really giving the whole process a whirl to see if it had any impact on my feelings about the book or the updates Kibbe has made to his style system.