Wednesday, June 20, 2007

Bra construction

One of the things I'm making at the moment is a Sewy pattern for myself. As I mentioned earlier, I usually make bra's from a pattern that is drafted to my own measurements. But I like exploring and trying, so that's why I bought a few commercial patterns in the past years. Plus, like most women I think, it's nice to have different models.

The Sewy pattern called "Linda" has very different cups. That's why I bought it about two years ago. I made it then as a wearable muslin from brown lycra and lace. But though the fit of the cups was right, the overall feeling was not good. On the underside the elastic flipped to the inside and the side cups in lace were not interfaced, which made it not strong enough for my D cup.
I left it at that but the pattern remained on my mind and I decided to make it again, altering the pattern.

The main change to the pattern for the cup so that the wire chanelling was not flipped towards the cups, but outward (as I'm used to do).
Here are three pictures of three different bra's to illustrate the problem.

The Linda pattern is a full band bra, and in that case you sew the chanelling over the elastic. But not in the description of Sewy (and two years ago I had not enough experience to know beforehand that I had to change it). In the picture of the brown bra you see the way the Linda patterns describes it. The wire is above the elastic



In this picture you can see the "normal" construction for a full band bra, this is the bra I'm working on.



And in this last picture you see the wire chanelling on a partial band bra. You sew the chanelling towards the cups, but that is no problem, because there is no elastic on ther underside of the cups (btw: this is the inside of the blue bra I posted early in May).

3 comments:

  1. Thanks for taking the time to take pictures and explain the difference in construction of the various bra types. I think your new bra is fantastic. Keep up the good work!! :-)

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  2. I am on my kindle so i didnt get a full impact look at everything..but what i did see was VERY informative and interesting.Being a woman and a sewer ive examined bras alot but u pointed out things i never really thought about.I will b viseting again! ; D I have a bra question..Why r bras now made with that foam rubber padding? I hate that stuff! Its hot it breaks down fast and it is so uncomfortable.and i would swear that it could deflect bullets!Hehe!Thank u for ur time!

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  3. Hi Deborah, Think that the main reason is that they usually don't have seams and therefor don't show under T-shirts.
    Glad you like the information on my blog.

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