#bra making

Undergarments: the final (sewing) frontier. For me, anyway. I guess I’m learning about how to properly fit and modify a bra, but it feels like learning about gravity by falling down a bunch of boulder piles.

Got wildly behind on updating this blog so I'm just gonna slap all recent projects on here with no regard to organization. It's my blog, I do what I want.

Most recent project: I made a bra! I've never had a bra that actually fit and I got so fed up with trying to find one that I bought a kit and made one. It's a finicky bit of sewing but not insanely difficult and it resulted in a bra that fit! There are definitely some changes I'll make to the next one I do, and I'd like to try some different materials, but overall I am very pleased.

I started this knit shawl back in August with yarn I bought for my birthday, and got it off the needles in January. It is very soft and squishy and Texture. Pattern is Dustland by Stephen West. This was my first time doing an I-cord bind off and I love how it looks. My phone camera sucks at colors but in real life it's the same deep copper as an aged penny. This is definitely the biggest thing I've ever knitted and I'm quite delighted by it.

This was an act of hubris and helped give me an RSI. I procrastinated on figuring out what to make my dad for Christmas until the beginning of December and then decided to speedrun a colorwork beanie knit with sock yarn. That was dumb. But by knitting furiously for three weeks I got it done in time and Dad enjoyed it.

OK the second round of construction went more smoothly and, yes, as I suspected, most of the fit issues were solved by sewing more carefully.

I fucked up the center gore, it drifted out of position while I was sewing it down and I did not realize. I'm going to have to pick that out and redo it I think, or somehow fix it.

But, overall, it has now taken its place as The Nicest Best-Fitting Bra I Own, and it's cute besides.

Yeah so at some point I thought, you know what I'm going to do instead of studying for my finals? Bra sewing. So I took a deep dive into bra patterns, underwires, lace and elastic.

There are a few patterns so many people rave about online, the Harriet bra, the Black Beauty bra, the Marlborough bra etc. There are so many small pattern companies specialised in lingerie patterns and it was a little intimidating when choosing one. They're also not cheap. A bra pattern is easily 15-20$ and I get why, but I'm a little cheap when it comes to patterns. This is however not a project I wanted to draft my own cups for. The Maya bra is a free pattern, but it's not a style of bra I wear often.

I don't have big boobs (I wear a 65D/30D) and like, a lot of the home-sewing bra patterns offer a lot of coverage and support. Which is great! But it's not what I wanted. So when I saw this nice plunging/push-up bra pattern, and people online were like "it's not a beginner friendly, buy when you have some bra-making experience" I went like "that sounds like a perfect pattern for me, a beginner". Of course I bought the paper pattern of the Merckwaerdigh PBH30. And the Cambia bra pattern because it intrigued me.

Then it was time to get lost in all the kinds of elastics and fabrics I would need. I caved and just bought a bra kit; shipping prices can variable and I didn't like the kits the Dutch sites offered. I did however like this black lace set by smallbobbins.be.

And then I started on a test bra, made out of some cotton voile and purple lace and lycra I had in my fabric stash. I had such a hard time with the instructions; even though they're available in mine and Merckweardigh's native language, this pattern is very... ehm brief in the instructions. Thank the gods for the wayback machine and clothing engineer's tutorial on how to insert the removable padding pocket. After that things made way more sense, but I still wrote my own instructions + illustrations (message me if you're interested). I decided halfway through my mock up, that I felt confident enough and that I would make a 'mock up' out of the bra set. I used a different piece of bra tule that was included (it was a shade lighter). The cup pieces were so small that I suspected I could make at least 2 bra's out of it if I threw some strap elastic, rings and sliders in that I already had in my stash. I ripped the hook and eye closure of a too small bra and reused it.

I made the B70, like the measurements table told me to do. I allowed myself some experimenting with a one-piece lace cup fabric (not my fave look). It went pretty well! Until I used a zigzag stitch to topstitch the power mesh to the picot elastic and the black thread on the beige power mesh showed all the missed stitches of my machine. It's not pretty at all. I hate ripping out seams that are positioned well, but I do want to redo this after I do some much needed maintenance and timing management on my machine, before I start zigzagging my 'official' version of the bra.

The wires, even though they're push up wires, are a little too big, but I've ordered shorter ones.

I did not jinx myself, and the fit is, while not perfect, better than anything else in my wardrobe by a long shot!

A flat lay of the finished product and some sizing details under the cut.

I make my own undies and bralettes, mostly because its a great way to use up scraps from other projects, but proper underwire bras have always seemed like An Undertaking. And there are so many little findings that you have to buy, and specialized elastic, and, and...

But I’ve decided that it’s worth trying to make a few. (The rest of this paragraph gets a little sidetracked: I think it’s always a good idea to try a completely new type of sewing project 2 or 3 times, since there will be Mistakes in the first version that you can learn from, and you won’t really know if it’s worth the effort until you’ve made a few and worked out the kinks. And by “new type”, I mean like broad categories--a fitted dress, a tee shirt, a pair of leggings. You gotta make a couple just to learn how, and then once you can make it right you can figure out if the effort is worth the results. The traditional process does this by having you make a muslin/toile/practice version of the item with cheaper materials--I suppose I just make wearable toiles.)