Lingerie: Making Bra Patterns is more fun with a friend!

I met the lovely Sharon from Petite and Sewing through the Stashbusting Sewalong FB group, when I realised through a photo on her blog that she lived close to me. We met in real life for coffee one day, and now chat regularly through email.

One of the things that Sharon has been wanting to try more of is bra making, and if you've been reading my blog at all over the past year and a bit, you would know that I've developed rather an obsession with making bras, and am constantly on the search for the perfect fit.

I swear my desk my clear at the start of the day!

That brings me to today's post, all about making a bra pattern with the goal of a perfect fit. I have had a lot of success with the style of my second bra block, and have been constantly tweaking the fit, but have been keen to see how it works on someone else, and Sharon wanted a perfectly fitting bra pattern. So we plotted and planned until we both had a Saturday free, and then met up at my place for some bra making!

For Sharon, we started from scratch with measurements, and following Beverly Johnson's method of making a pattern, Sharon set to work on her pattern. By the end of the day, she had a pattern, and we just had enough time to sew it up from calico and have a look at the initial fit.

Sharon's pattern making

The same issues came up making this one as when I made my own, mainly in the drafting of the upper cup piece. That will need a bit of work to sit properly. As with mine when I drafted it, the upper cup is too loose. I'm still not really sure how you're supposed to take the measurement that determines the width of the cup. I had been hoping that it wasn't just me not understanding what to do on that bit. Apart from that, the rest of the bra doesn't fit perfectly yet, but at least Sharon now has a starting point to work from, so I look forward to seeing how she goes with it. I will link it up here when she does!

Sharon's bra toile, with wires in

While Sharon was working on her pattern, I wanted to have a play with my pattern to improve the fit of the bridge, and I made up the pattern for my next bra. I have so many ideas for bras floating around in my brain, but they usually all start with a change that I don't want to make until I've perfected another factor in the fit of my bras. Sharon has been following my bra posts, and knew that I'd had issues with the fit of the bra around the bridge area. She has a copy of Norma from Orange Lingerie's book Demystifying Bra Fitting (Note to self: must get myself a copy of that), and mentioned a fitting tip from it whereby you copy out your bridge pieces onto two pieces of card and fit that to your body, moving it around until it fits. Such a simple and effective solution! I also found this post from Maddie which deals with this issue as well, outlining some methods of correcting fit issues from both Norma and Beverly - go have a look, it's worth a read.

Prior to our bra making day, I had a play with my bridge so I'd be ready to make a pattern from it. I traced out onto pattern card the bridge / cradle pieces from my latest bra pattern, including the seam allowance, and snipped into the seam allowance on the curve around the cups. I used a paperclip to join the two pieces together at the centre, and set to work trying to figure out where it should go. This is not terribly easy, but would have been easier with an extra set of hands to hold one side in place while trying to get the other side sorted. I'm sure that if I asked the husband to help it wouldn't have been as quick to do though! When I was happy with how it was sitting, I put a pin in the centre so it was more stable, and checked the placement once last time.

Using this as a base, I set about making a pattern from it while helping Sharon out whenever she got stuck on something. I chose what I was going to make the next bra from, and made the rest of the pattern pieces. By the time Sharon left, I almost had everything cut out, so I finished that after she was gone, and started to sew it all up.

I'll leave all the exact details of the bra until I've finished it, and can dedicate a post to the bra.

And I almost forgot: I did stashbust half a metre of stretch lace, which I gave to Sharon! Maybe she'll manage to sew it up before I do.