Monday, August 21, 2017

Sewing Bras - Copying My Favorite RTW bra!

It's finally finished! This gorgeous blue and purple bra got put on the back burner as I excitedly sewed up the Pin-up Girls Classic Bra and awaited the arrival of different underwires.

Look at those fabulous colors!

I'm loving how everything turned out!  Mirroring the fabric was a labor of love as the original fabric included pixilated gradations from green to blue to purple.


At anyrate, a quick run down of how I copied my favorite RTW bra.  After stalking Beverly Johnson's (aka The Fairy Bra Mother) blog, she had mentioned "pin copying" the seams [link here] on your favorite bra to get the basic patterns.  I had attempted to copy this particular bra before and thought I had a pretty good approximation but this is variation yielded MUCH better results.  [Previous attempt here] And with fewer revisions. Actually, I haven't needed to do any alterations yet.

Steps amount to placing paper over foam board/cardboard.  Place bra on top of paper - making sure the paper is large enough to pin copy the pieces on to.  I started with the smallest piece - inner bottom cup.  Use a few pins to "stretch" out the corners and curves.  Then use a pin to "trace" around the seam lines like you're a cheap tattoo artist.  Remove and repeat on an different piece.  For longer pieces you may need to pin out half of the piece, "trace" with pin, remove most of pins leaving the ones near the center of that piece.  Then pin the other half of the piece and finish "tracing" the piece with the pin.  Trace the dots and true the lines.  Your patterns pieces are ready!

Here are my results!


In this particular case, while i did trace the bridge and back band, I used my go-to pieces.  A heavily altered cradle and back band from the Maya bra.


A close up on the pleat detail.  Here's the link for the methods I used from Beverly's blog.


A full coverage, ballet style back band with 4 [four!] rows of hooks/eyes.  The higher sides and back ensure a smooth silhouette.



Here's my version vs the original.  What do you think?


Saturday, August 19, 2017

Sewing Bras - Watson Bra Pattern by Cloth Habit

I took the plunge!  Tried out the VERY popular Watson Bra Pattern by Cloth Habit.  And boy and I glad I did!


Easy to sew and SOOO comfy.  You better believe I'll be making more of these babies.  I forsee nursing bra conversion, maybe a cami overlay version, lace... so many possibilities!


No alternations needed. Zero! Fabric was a knit terry from my knit stash I picked up for cheap ($2/pound!) in downtown LA last year. I used lightweight powernet in the cups and medium weight powernet in the band. Elastics from Sew Sassy. To keep things a little neater (and comfort),  I did use wire channeling to cover up the cup seams though no wires were used.  The bows were necessary to cover up the mess at the top of the cups due to not following instructions. 😑



Money well spent. I'll definitely be making more! 

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