Adventures in... lingerie making?
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.
To mine and everybody's surprise, (no really, I was really surprised), the cups are... too small? Yeah not sure how that happened. I might be on my period, but even those measurements fall neatly in the "84-86 cm" measurement for the B70 cup. I'm not totally spilling over, but it's noticeable enough that some of my breast tissue is not in the cup before I did the swoop. Adding the little padding 'cookies' for some volume is making the problem a little worse. So I guess that means I'm making a C70 for my 'official' bra.