Lingerie: Blue Duchess Satin Bra

Today actually marks the one year anniversary of my first blog post on bra making. I was going to do a little run down on some of the things I've learnt over the past year, but I might save that post for another time.

After the success of my new bra pattern, I was keen to try another one based on this pattern block. and had this pattern ready within days of finishing my new lace bra.

The Bra
I made a few subtle alterations from the last bra. I made a slight adjustment to the Upper Cup before rounding the top, and added a vertical seam right at the centre of the lower cup, rounding the seams out just a little.

Before I can really say that a pattern fits me perfectly, I like to try it out with bra wadding, so that's why I used it for this bra. I was really keen to use gold rings and slider, but didn't want to try it with white straps, so thought I would try adding fabric to the front part of the straps.

So I cut out a bias strip of my satin fabric, folded it in thirds and stitched it on, however, this is what happened.

Disaster! The fabric is clearly way too thick. The elastic did not bounce back like I had hoped it would, but curled up instead. I tried again to see what would happen with just one layer, and it wasn't that much better. I still had my heart set on using fabric on the straps though, so sewed a tube of the duchess satin, fed the elastic through it, and then stitched the fabric down at regular intervals. Not exactly what I was going for, but a good enough compromise. If you were wondering, I cut the strip of satin 35mm wide, folded the fabric in half and stitched together 11mm from the folded edge, then turned it out the right way. I stretched the elastic out as far as it would go, and cut the satin tube to that length, then fed the elastic through, secured at each end, before stitching down at quarter intervals.

Costing
Interfacing and satin - stash
$0.79    Bra Wadding
$0.11    Tricot
$0.22    Powernet
$0.66    Underwires
$0.84    Underwire casing
$0.56    Elastic
$0.64    Strap elastic
$0.73    Gold rings and sliders
$1.54    Back closure
$0.54    Thread (rough estimate)

Grand Total  $6.62

The Fit
I'm pretty pleased with this bra, but using the bra wadding showed that there is a bit of extra room around the cross cup seam towards the centre front. I just need to take out a small sliver to fix this up next time. This may have been caused by the rounding out of the vertical seam, which would have added some extra volume towards the bottom of the cup, or maybe there was just more room to begin with. The lace bra that I tried this pattern with first would have just moulded to my shape, rather than the other way round.

Anyway, onwards and upwards! I haven't planned out my next bra yet, but I do have a few ideas in the works.