I've finished my third Loftus Bralette now, with some minor revisions to the fit. There's a whole series of blog posts about adjustments you can make, and since I wanted mine to be both slightly more supportive and slightly more forward-oriented, I did the adjustments to shorten the straps, shorten the neckline elastic, and shorten the front curve of the powerbar. It worked, and the newest one is slightly more... pointy.
I also made it from linen for the nonstretch components. And that was a qualified success. Qualified, because the combination of the way linen is in general, plus the shorter neckband elastic meaning it was getting gathered more, meant it wound up with a little bit of a lumpy appearance; a synthetic fabric would I think gather slightly more gracefully and be a bit more forgiving. But linen has such excellent moisture-management properties in particular that I forsee this one is going to wind up in very heavy rotation in my wardrobe. I will certainly use linen in bra construction again, though I will watch this one to see how it washes, because I'm not ironing a bra.
I do think I have the fit dialed in now though. So I have a few more fabrics I want to try-- silk, more elaborate laces, etc-- and then I want to try making it with stretch material for more of a lounge bra since I always need more of those in my wardrobe. But in the meantime I have to sew some other things I think.
[image description: the bra in-progress, showing the peach-colored neckband elastic, white linen fabric, and peach topstitching.] I forgot to take a picture of it on. We'll have to see how well it wears.
That center insert panel is a prime location to do some decorative stitching or embroidery....
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.
So, by the sizing of the Cashmerette Willowdale I am a 40L (which maaay be a size too small, I'm going to have to muslin another cup size). Which is not a size in the pattern, but I could sister size it by using the 44J and adjusting the band.
Now, I already have a perfectly fitted band from doing the Bare Essentials drafting course. So I just traced off the 44J wire line onto my band and tweaked it a bit. (The Willowdale uses Porcelynne regular wires, and my band is drafted to Porcelynne wide flat vertical wires, and I needed to add a little to the front band to make enough space for the channeling.) And I just the cups without any alterations.
The fabric and most of the elastics etc are from an old Bra Maker's Supply kit that I think I got when Sweet Cups went out of business. With Porcelynne strap elastic because I had it on hand, and some mystery lace and sheer cup lining from my stash.
LOL so I have started the project but not made a ton of progress, but I thought, well, I'll write it up anyway.
First thing I did was watch the sewalong. It's not the slickest, shiniest sewalong-- there's no jaunty theme song, there's no animated intro, there's no flashy graphics-- it's very much Old Youtubey, where it's someone actually doing the steps and showing you as she goes, not really sped up, with minimal intercuts. As it happens, the demonstrating sewist is the owner of Porcelynne, which is a lingerie supply company and pattern maker, and she also helped design this pattern and the previous Cashmerette bra because she is not only a bra specialist but also is a very busty woman herself, and so completely on the same wavelength. She has incredible technical knowledge, has clearly sewn very many bras, produces a lovely end product, and shows you several places where she either made a mistake or has made many mistakes in the past and has developed this trick to avoid the mistakes. So it's a good solid sewalong... just not the most short-attention-span-friendly thing in the world.
So I will say I watched the sewalong with closed captions on and at 1.5x speed, just for my first runthrough.
(I can't watch a sewalong or tutorial while I'm trying to sew a thing. I do best if I watch it first, so I know what to expect. Hopefully it relates well enough to the instruction manual that I can piece the two together and figure out what I'm supposed to do as I go.)
And now I've started my own sew-through.
I bought a bunch of stuff from Porcelynne-- a nice kit for once I've made it, but basic stuff to muslin it. There are several places on the Cashmerette website and also in the instruction book for the pattern that lays out exactly what fabric you need and what notions. I also then made a list in Sharpie on a scrap of paper, inventorying how many pieces of each pattern piece I needed, and how many inches of each type of elastic I needed, so that I could enclose that inventory along with this iteration of the garment, so that I could refer to the checklist.
I also labeled the elastic-- N for neckline, U for underarm-- as I cut it, so I would know what was supposed to go where.
[img desc my hand holding several lengths of peach-colored elastic, one with a sharpie N and the other with a sharpie U which is sideways and looks like a C but I know what it means trust me. in the background is a baggie with other elastic in it including two pink straps I cut off an old bra to reuse the notions. This bra muslin is not going to be all one color or even going to match, that's just how it is.]
I forgot to order cup lining, it was in my cart but then the session refreshed and I didn't re-add it. So I'm making my muslin with two layers of the same fabric, which means I need to label which layers are the lining and which the outer. This is both easier and harder and I'll let you know whether I recommend this or not 😅.
I'm following Jen from Porcelynne's suggestion of marking the wrong side of the fabric with painter's tape, and i applied the tape immediately after cutting out each piece since there's not an obvious right or wrong side to this fabric, and I also used a felt-tipped marker to write on the painter's tape which 1) piece it was, which 2) layer it was, and 3) whether it was the pattern piece or the mirror image. (Given my specific brand of neurospicy I cannot reliably tell left from right so I'm just making One Half Of The Bra The Same Direction As The Paper Pattern And The Other Half Mirror-Imaged and I'll find out which is right and which is left once i put it on.)
I also immediately used a felt-tipped marker to trace the grainlines on the pattern pieces, then flipped them over and traced the marker line onto the other side, so that I could see how the grainline should be oriented while I had the pattern pieces in mirror-image mode, since the most accurate way to cut fabric is not to cut it while folded. And i know myself, I'd want to wiggle the odd-shaped pieces to fit best on the fabric, and I'd fuck up the grainlines, which are important especially as some of the pieces are cut from stretch fabric.
To add to the confusion, the lining is inside-out from the regular bra. So my first layer, everything mirror-imaged gets an A on the end. (Piece 1a, 2a, 3a on the painter's tape.) but for the lining, the A goes on everything NOT mirror imaged, because the lining and main pieces are cut from the same pattern piece. So the first half of my bra consists of pieces 1, 2, 3 in main fabric, and then mirror-imaged pices 1L, 2L, 3L, and 6L in the lining fabric, and then also 6 non-mirror-imaged in the lining fabric-- 6 is the center front bit and you cut both layers from your lining.
So then the opposite of that is the other half of my bra. Pieces 1A, 2A, 3A, and then lining 1LA, 2LA, 3LA, etc. And then there are two copies of pattern pieces 5 and 4 cut from the powermesh fabric-- the powerbar, and the back band.
L for lining appears in the written instructions, and that plus my own inability to distinguish left from right is why the bra is not labeled L for left or R for right. L for Lining would confuse me even if I just labeled the right half. So I did not, it is Side Unmarked and Side A.
I traced the paper pattern in felt-tipped marker directly unerasably onto the fabric because this is my muslin. And then after I cut it out (with a rotary cutter and mat) I took a pencil, laid the translucent fabric over the paper pattern piece, and traced on every notch, every marking, and the entirety of the sewing lines. For the mirror-imaged pieces, I did this and then flipped them over and darkened the sewing lines onto the now-right side of the fabric. Because this is my muslin and it is far more important to me to sew it perfectly accurately than it is to have the marks erase for later when I maybe wear it and maybe never do.
Yes, this took forever. I did not do this at my usual cutting table I did it on the kitchen table where I could sit comfortably, because I only needed about 24x24" of space to work, and I needed good light and a very steady surface and to be comfortable and not rushed while I worked.
[image description: all my cut out pieces spread across my kitchen table/counter, labeled in silver metallic sharpie on blue painter's tape, with the roll of painter's tape and the paper pattern pieces and my cup of water and scissors all strewn around.]
As soon as I was done I lay everything out, compared it to my checklist, compared the checklist back to the instruction book, made sure the painter's tape was on the correct side of each piece, and then put everything neatly away. I have all my elastics and notions in one little plastic baggie, and then all of the second half of the bra (so, mirror-imaged main pieces, and then non-mirror-imaged lining pieces) in another little plastic baggie, and then the first half of the bra is just in the main baggie that i put the other baggies into.
I brought the whole thing down into my sewing room, and what I did was get the lid of a rubbermaid tote to use as a tray, and lay out half the bra on that, triple-checking the orientation of the pieces, and I did find one where the masking tape was on the wrong side somehow argh. But I've started off by sewing the outer layer and lining layer of the first half together, and I got like one seam in before I was interrupted, but everything inactive is still in the baggies and everything active is on that rubbermaid tote lid in its correct orientation, so I could walk away from it and know where to resume when I come back.
I also have the paper pattern pieces easily to hand to check that notches are correctly marked, because I have no faith in myself to have done that right consistently. Normally I put the pattern away but I'm not doing that here, and I think it makes sense to just print the pattern out numerous times and put any corrections on every instance of it, and then have several copies of it so that any project in-progress can still have the pattern pieces with it until it is complete.
This is my note to myself to do that, keep the pattern pieces there and make adjustments as necessary and then when I finish the muslin, print out another copy with adjustments included.
I also would like to print out a mirror-imaged copy, and potentially have separate pattern pieces for the left and right, as I expect some asymmetry to be a factor.
Adventures in Bra Sewing: Figuring Out Fit Part 3: Common Pattern Alterations
Welcome back to the third installment of the Figuring Out Fit series! In the first part of this series we looked at how to start fitting a bra pattern, and in the second part we examined how to diagnosing common fit problems. In today’s post we will take a look at how to make some common pattern alterations for the fit issues we discussed in the second post.
Although I’ve done quite a few…
