Thursday 21 January 2016

Black Cherry Bra




So here it is! My black cherry bra. I've been working on this thing for DAYS. Isn't it pretty? There's a bit of a back story on this bra...

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Last January, I enrolled in a bra making class on Craftsy. I made a bra from the Shelley pattern. It's a lovely bra and it fits (the only modification I made to the pattern was to take three inches off the straps) but I felt like it gave me a bit of a "square" boob. What I mean is that while most of my breast was nice and round, in one spot, on the top of my breast there was a flat spot. My husband  voluntarily examined my breasts and said he didn't see anything wrong (smart man), but I did. I looked for differences between my new bra and my ready-to-wear bras and found that my new bra had a split lower cup while my store-bought bras didn't.  So, in an effort to get rid of the "square boob" problem, I decided to make a modification to the pattern.  For this bra, I kept the power bar at the side of the cup, and I kept the upper cup, but I combined the two pieces of the lower cup into one lower cup. 

I'm not sure where I went wrong with the modification. I marked the seam allowances on the two original pattern pieces, and lined them up so that the intersections of seam lines were stacked on top of each other, then I redrew a new lower cup piece.  In my head that makes sense.  It shouldn't shorten the length around the cup, just take a tiny bit of room out of the lower cup. But somehow it made the cup too short for the frame of the bra.  I had to take a half inch or so off the bridge to make the cups fit in properly.  THEN, my underwires wouldn't fit properly.  They're jammed in there, but I'm afraid they're going to come poking through. I'll order some shorter wires to address this issue.

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The other issue I see, is that with the lower centre bridge, there is not enough force on the outside of my breast (in that area almost under my arm).  This allows my breasts to expand past my frame... If I look in the mirror, my boobs block the view of part of my arms.  This is not acceptable.  So, I will take a tuck of about an inch in the underarm side of the power bar. (Acceptable only because it's either that or toss the whole bra.)

With shorter underwires, and the tuck transferred back to the power bar pattern piece, I hope to have a bra pattern that fits perfectly. However, I'm not sure about the low neckline.  I'm a well built girl... an H cup... I like the security of having lots of coverage. So, we'll see.  Maybe the next bra will be this new modified pattern, or maybe it'll be another attempt at fixing the "square boob" of the Shelley pattern. 

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It should be noted, that I wear the Shelley bra at least once a week.  It's not so square that it's noticeable when I'm dressed.  But in a perfect world, I'd like it to be fixed.

Completed projects: 2
Remaining projects: 50


*** Edited on January 22/16 ***

One of my children has asked that I not post pictures of my undergarments to social media. In order to respect her wishes, the pictures have been removed.

Also, after trying on the bra again, and looking at it like a seamstress instead of emotionally, my bra fits it just isn't flattering.  For the next one, instead of taking the dart out, I will change the "DOGS" (degree of greatest stretch) of the fabric in the power bar so that the stretch is vertical instead of diagonal, and I'd also like to line it. Maybe those changes will be better able to keep my H cup boobs contained to my smallish upper frame.

So, the result is that I own a beautiful bra that doesn't keep the girls in line as well as I like. I have decided to keep it, but it won't get the same amount of wear that the others get.



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