Tester Bra #Eleventy

Learning to sew bras is turning out to be a lot like learning to sew clothing.  At first I had no idea what I was doing but was thrilled to make anything that looked remotely like clothes, then I got really excited and started buying up fabric and notions like the worlds supply was running out and I had to grab all I could.  Next came the really obnoxious stage where I couldn't stop telling people how easy it was and that they should sew (clothing/bras) too!

And then there's the fitting slump, where I finally realise that that there's no point in sewing this stuff unless I can actually do better either in style or fit than what's available in the shops.  And actually fitting is pretty hard. 

I'm happy to say that I think I'm through the slump on bra making, and I'm still feeling fairly enthusiastic, I wonder what the next stage is?

My last bra attempt was about 45% successful.  

The cups fit me, but that's about all that was working.  The underwires were poking me in a way that would make for a pretty good torture device and the band was too tight.  I needed help with the band, so I bought this book:

If I could go back in time, and do the bra making obsession again, I would have bought this book much sooner, and skipped the Kwik Sew bra's altogether. The KS bra's instructions are fantastic, and they really show how easy the construction is, but I think the pattern in this book is a better starting point. Just what I was looking for, a full coverage, full band bra. On top of that, the instructions probably rival Kwik-Sew for clarity, and that's saying something.  In the later chapters J.L M-F describes how to change the pattern in to one with more seams in the cup, partial band, and a whole lot more.  It really holds you by the hand at first, and gets all the way in to drafting from measurements and grading.  I don't plan on embarking on either of those adventures, but it's cool to know it's there.

Bare Essentials has it's own variation for measuring for size, and the bra pattern is drafted to fit those measurements.  I normally wear a 34D or 34DD but I came out to be a 32E on one side and F on the other according to the formula

I could see from the pattern piece that the bridge would be too wide, but I thought I'd give the pattern a go with no alterations first, and adjust then.

This was the first comfortable bra I've made.  Whoo hoo!!!  The bridge was too wide, it prevented the underwires from sitting all the way on to my skin in the CF, but that didn't effect comfort, and it was so comfy that I wore it all day, and all night.  Even with the dodgy construction.



Bra-making notions are annoying to source, so for tester bras, I've got a couple of strategies to help.  I got some pre-made straps in Fabric Planet downtown.  I think they were 5 for a dollar or something.  I just rip them back off when I'm done.

I've used self-made casing from fabric before, this is actually what Kwik-Sew has in their instructions, but this time I used cotton twill tape. It worked surprisingly well.

And of course I rip up old bras and take their rings and sliders, and in rare cases where they're still in good nick, I take the hook and eye pieces too.

One part that's a total pain to rip back out is the elastic.  

Luckily I live near the L.A. Garment district and I found whole rolls of picot edge plush elastic a while ago.  It's my birthday week, and I just got a whole pile of presents, so I'm feeling generous.  If you want some of the white plush elastic you can see on this latest bra, leave me a comment and I'll pick one or more winners next week some time.

Going Rogue: Tank Top from sloper pattern

My new favourite photo spot.  A glamourous parking lot rooftop

I keep forgetting the differences between the terms sloper and block, but I think that they're defined differently in different places.  I'm referring to the final draft of the Butterick fitting shell that I made.  I have a copy with and without seam allowances  so I think both terms apply.

Anyway, I scaled back my ambitions from a button-up shirt, and decided to get at least a basic woven tank top out of the fitting extravaganza.  I started by comparing two patterns I'd tried to make in the past.  In both cases the tester versions I sewed were so depressing, I never got to a finished product.

I traced off a copy of my sloper with 5/8" seam allowances, I kept the bust dart, didn't draw in the waist darts, but didn't do anything to remove them either.

The first tank top I had tried to make, way back when, was the Colette Sorbetto

The side seam actually isn't far off, but you  can see that the armhole is really high and the bust dart far too high and not taking up nearly enough fabric. These are problems I didn't really know how to deal with at the time.  I tried out about 3 unsuccessful hacks of this pattern before giving up.


The second tank I tried out was Simplicity 1886, view E.

I had thought that this one was the jackpot because it had cup sizing, a CF seam to use for fitting, and if I got it fitting nicely, there could be sleeves too!

And here it is laid on top of my sloper, it's lined up totally wrongly, and I've since thrown out the pattern, but you'll just have to trust me, I tried it out as drafted, I took room out of the CF, I hacked up the pattern all kinds of ways.  It was a disaster.  That might have had something to do with the fact that I really didn't know what I was doing.

So screw commercial patterns, I HAVE a pattern that fits me, I just need a couple of design lines, right?  A new neckline and armhole and I'm good. It couldn't be that easy, surely?

I made up the sloper in muslin again.  I put it on to the dressform over the other sloper.  I found a knit top that I like the neckline of, and put that on Madame too.

I traced the neck and arm lines

Then I took the muslin apart again, and traced those lines back on to paper

Then I added some seam allowances

And made it up in some cheap fabric.  For the first time EVER, I liked a woven tank top that I'd made! (ya, there's no pic, sorry, I rushed ahead with the next step too fast)

In celebration, I decided to get all fancy pants and make it up in some nice eyelet/lace stuff I found in SAS fabric.  It's very loosely woven, so it needed lining or underling, so I lined the $4 per yard fabric from SAS, with $8 per yard cotton from Mood.  It's on my commute home, so they got me.

The problem with making up your own patterns is of course there are very few instructions. Once again I was making it up as I went, bit it went a little better this time.  Here's what I did, but if anyone's got any better methods, I would LOVE to hear them.

I sewed the lining to the lace at the neck and arm holes

I usually put stickers on the right sides of fabrics when it's hard to tell right from wrong

Spread the lace and lining like below:

Sewed the front lining to back lining, and front lace to back lace along the side seams

Right sides are facing each other, the shoulders are sandwiched in the middle

Then I was left with the problem of what to do about the shoulders.  I probably should have tackled them first, but I couldn't figure out how.  Eventually I sewed the lace to the lace for a couple of stitches, and then just topstitched the whole lot down.  The lace is very forgiving.

All done!

No wait!

I hadn't sewn the waist darts so it was a little boxy.  I pinned some fisheye darts in just the lace, just below the bust line, in the front and back.  I didn't bother to sew them in to the lining.  Turns out that fisheye darts, and any dart that doesn't end in a seam is basically the best thing ever.   You can put them in when the garment is totally finished and get what ever nice shaping that your heart desires (or your body demands).

Lookie, the denim from my jeans is fading nicely

I'm pretty freaking happy with this top.  I'm not even mad that I was taking these pictures at my place of work on a Saturday. (But I was totally mad when I was still at my stupid office at 9pm)

In case you're curious, I traced out the Burda shirt, and it's pretty good.  It was a toss up between Burda and a Silhouette pattern shirt that I started some time in the past.  Peggy from Silhouette often remarks that she doesn't grade up shoulders the way that the Big 4 do, so they should fit much better.  Burda won in the end because the whole shoulder/armhole/neckline trifecta looked like it was closer to my sloper.  In fact their ease was so non-crazy that I actually needed exactly the size that my measurements indicate.  Take that Ease Monster!

The dreaded monster called Ease

I did get a nicely padded dressform, but I'm beginning to wonder if one of the major reasons for tackling the Butterick Fitting Shell was totally misguided.  The idea of the fitting shell pattern seems to make sense on the face of it. You take their minimum ease sloper and fit it, and then repeat those same adjustments on all of their patterns on in to the future, easy, right?  Except it's not that simple at all, and the reason is the dreaded monster called Ease.

They provide a more detailed measurement chart with the fitting shell, it provides circumferences like usual, but also lengths.

I was actually pretty surprised that their Size 14 block fit as well as it did out of the envelope (after basic length adjustments and using the cup sizing included in the pattern) because even though my chest measurement indicates a size 14, I NEVER make size 14 patterns from Mc-Vogue-rick.

If it's a knit I wrap the fabric around myself in key places - waist, hips, bust - with what feels like a good amount of ease, and measure that.   Then I take those finished garment measurements, and make up the size that will achieve those measurements.  It's often a 10 or 12, but sometimes even an 8.

Now that I'm thinking about it, I've basically never made a Big 4 woven garment that I was really happy with.  And now I know the monster responsible.

Butterick Ease Chart

I remembered from a dusty corner of my brain that Ann of Gorgeous Fabrics had linked a very interesting study from North Carolina state which found differences in the Vogue and Butterick fitting shells, so I ordered B5678 princess seamed shirt pattern from Butterick.

This lady does not look like she's got 5" of extra fabric around her boobs

I repeated my usual process for knits, since it works so well.  I measured a RTW shirt that fits me fairly well.  The fabric is a cotton that has a small amount of stretch, but not too much.  It was 37" at the high bust.  I looked at the shirt pattern

That measurement matches the Size 8 shirt.  So.... yup, that's 5 1/2" of ease on the Size 14.  Ok, well fine.  They are sticking to their ease chart for a 'Semi-fitted shirt', but I don't want all that ease, so I decide to forge ahead with a size 8.

Pleased as punch that I have a dress form now, I decide to tissue fit the pattern to the dress-form.  Tissue fitting myself has been totally useless, but Madame doesn't mind me sticking her with pins, so the process is a whole lot more effective.

In this picture, I've matched up the edge of the shoulder seam line with the seam on my sloper, and the other pattern piece's neckline with the neck of the sloper.

The result is no good at all.  They seem to have added 3 or 4 inches of ease to the shoulder too.

I know that my neckline is low from the sloper, but this shoulder excess is really... well... excessive.

Weirdly the bust mark ended up in close to the right place.  Maybe it's because I had to move it on the size 14, but the size 8 has the right neck to bust length?  Dunno

No surprise here, but the back is almost as bad.

So if I went ahead and used this pattern, I would have to take inches of room from the upper chest, re-draft the collar to match my adjusted shirt front and back.  Re-draft the sleeve because the arm-hole would be different (didn't take a pic, sorry).  Adjust the lengths by different amounts from the sloper because I'm starting with a different size.  What a mess.

Have I ever mentioned that I really don't want to draft patterns??  That's why I buy them, so other people have done the work.  But what's the point if I'd have to make all these changes?  Looking at this total mess of tissue paper, I'm feeling slightly less embarrassed of my first couple of garment sewing disasters.

Burda 119 - 06/2012

Burda had a nice looking shirt in their latest issue, and it turns out I have a subscription now. It was a Christmas present, but it took until May for the first one to arrive.  Anyone have any opinions about Burda's shirt drafting?  Nhi and Amity - when are you guys going to have a button up shirt?

I want to end this downer of a post on a somewhat positive note, so here's my sole contribution to Me-Made May.  The first garment I ever made for myself.  I made it years and years ago, while I was in college, on a borrowed hand-crank Singer.  I had no idea what I was doing, so there is no seam finishing whatsoever, and the zipper was inserted wrong so the pull is on the inside.  Despite all of that I still wear it all the time.

Happy Sewing everyone!

Advanced Cloning: Bras

Seems like I'm not the only one in the world trying (and failing) to clone things.  But happily my experiments have a little less riding on them.  I've been trying to make a useable bra for weeks now, but it's turned out just a little wonky each time.

I tested out Kwik Sew 3300 in size 34D:

It actually fit more or less OK, but the lycra I used wasn't nearly supportive enough

I tried Kwik Sew 2489:

The band turned out too long, too narrow, and the cup's shape gave me pancake boobs.  I've chopped it up now, the photo above is all that's left.  I was probably using the wrong size, the pattern only has A, B and C cups so I used the 36C cup in the 34 band, which should have been the right cup size, but who knows. There's lots of info out there on how to adjust the cup shaping (here, here, here and here for starters), but I'm just not good enough at manipulating 2D patterns to get the 3D shape that I like in a bra.

I could have just gone back to KS3300 and tweaked from there, but I really want to be able to make a TNT full band bra with 3 piece cups made from a relatively stable fabric.  All my favourite RTW bras fit this description.  I could have kept trying to adjust KS2489 and make 43 tester cups and finally figure it out but I have no interest in pattern drafting.  Someone else has already put in all the effort, and that person was a professional who spends all day every day drafting up bra patterns.  So I decided to copy a RTW bra.

The bra that fits the best, (I think, although  figuring out what a good fit looks like is a whole palaver all by itself) is a non-padded lace bra from Marks and Spencers. Ripping it apart to make a pattern was not an option, since the bra comes from halfway around the world, and I can't just go out and get another if I chop it up.  So I tried a version of this technique where you pin down the bra and try to trace it.  I pinned paper to the bra, and tried to draw along the seamline.

It all looked great until I tried to sew it up - I'd even pinned the draft back on to the bra, and it looked pretty close.  But no - when I sewed up the cup, the shape was all wrong.  The pinning down method might work fine for simpler cups, but the three piece cup was just too curved for paper to lie flat against it while I attempted to trace it.  So next I tried muslin, with the bra resting on another foam bra for support. It was much better!  It was so much easier to pin to the bra, and smooth out over the curved areas

The largest piece was traced easily, but smaller pieces were fiddly and I kept thinking "I wish I could see through this like tracing paper"

Oh my lord, how could I forget so quickly?.  I apologise sincerely to Kenneth D. King.  I've told anyone who seemed even remotely interested (and a few who weren't) about how great KDK's Jeanius class was.  HOW could I forget that organza is the perfect damn stuff for copying RTW.  What a dummy.

The red dotted line is the paper trace, the pencil is the organza trace.

THEN (are you sick of this yet?) I adjusted the bridge using the method described in "Demystifying Bra Fitting And Construction".  I didn't have a paperclip to hand, so I used bobby pins.

Then I adjusted the bridge and the cradle on KS2489 to match the band on the M&S bra.

I tried to make up a tester bra with extra long bands the way that's described here, but I'm not sure it works, my powernet kept folding in on itself.

This crazy looking tester bra fit one cup and not the other.  I was so confused.  I'm not symmetrical but it's never been too big of an issue.  Many head-scratchings later I realised that I'd sewn in the smallest cup piece the wrong way around.  You gotta keep track of those seams!

So here's the the product I've got at the moment:

It's getting closer. I miscalculated the seam allowance on the top of the arm area (only added 1/4' instead of the width of the elastic), so there wasn't enough room for my underwire. I used another underwire I pulled out of another bra, but it's sticking in to my ribcage in the CF, and I don't know if it's because the band is too tight (I also over-corrected the fitting there), I did the bridge adjustment wrong, or the underwire is wrong for the bra.

But hey!  The cups fit great!

Here's my elastic sewing cheat sheet:

Side by side: M&S and Copy:

These experiments were made possible by the wonderful instruction provided by:

• Kenneth D. King, the RTW cloning magician
• Sigrid, the bra making Typhoid Mary
• Cloth Habits bra sew-along  - I seem to find more info there every time I go back
• The ladies of the Bra-Making thread on Pattern Review
• Bonus points to Needles and Haystacks who did a great bra-making tutorial, is not a small cup size (I've noticed the sewers who have the fastest success with bra making have smaller cups - no co-incidence I think) AND is in Ireland.
• Amazing information on bra drafting from Pattern School (this link is sort of NSFW but it's a fantastic idea)
• and Foundations Revealed
• A tricot bra kit from Bravo Bella (I used plush back elastic from some crazy place in Downtown LA and stole underwires and straps from another M&S bra)
• The fine people at Marks And Spencer for drafting up a great bra!

Quickie Beach Cover-up dress - McCalls 6558

I think this is the last review from my pre-holiday¹ sewing frenzy, I haven't sewn a thing since I've been back, isn't it funny how that works?

Pattern Notebook

McCalls 6558 - Elasicated dress

My hastily sewn and serged dress, standing in front of the sewing box of a lady whose mind would be blown by a serger

View / Size used: 
I cut a size 14 because I didn't mind too much if it was a little big.  I knew that I could adjust it easily with the elastic.  I used view E, but I had very little fabric, so I just made it as long as I could.

Fabric Used: 
This dress counts as stash-busting for both myself, Cindy from Cation Designs who generously gave me the fabric AND some lady who originally gave it to Cindy!  It's some kind of mystery poly blend with a crepe like texture and a fair amount of stretch.

Pattern alterations or any design changes you made: 

A better question would be; why on earth did I need a pattern for this dress at all?  I don't know guys, I always seem to misjudge how much or how little fabric I need on these super simple shapes.  It wasn't exactly two rectangles on top of each other, but it was pretty close. 

Were the instructions easy to follow?
They probably were, it might have worked out better if I'd used them.  They tell you use the seam allowance to form a casing for the waist elastic, but I'd loaned my zig-zagging sewing machine to my neighbour and I could have waited, but as we've discussed this dress was made during some very powerful tunnel vision², so I sewed the seam with the serger, catching the elastic as I went.  I had wrapped it around my waist to get a measurement, but it ended up too big.  See what I was saying about needing help with the simplest measurements?  I got my sewing machine back in time to do the top casing and the hem, thank goodness.

What did you particularly like or dislike about the pattern?
I like that it's super easy to sew, and it's a shape that I do see in stores.

What did you particularly like or dislike about the finished garment?
It was the perfect thing to throw on after getting out of the ocean or the swimming pool.  It was also useful when I needed to sneakily change out of my bikini.  The poly-ish fabric didn't show that it was wet very much, and dried quickly in the sun.

Would you sew it again? Would you recommend it to others?
I might well make it again, in fact I might still rip out the elastic and do it properly.

Construction Notes:
I used wooly nylon for the first time on this project.  I haven't had much luck with twin needling, so I thought I'd give it a shot with a stretchy bobbin thread.

When I started sewing I remember having a really hard time figuring out how I would even get the machine to sew using a twin needle.  I think I was googling "double needle" and not coming up with much.  So if there's anyone out there searching for double needle - here's how it goes:

Wind an extra bobbin, and put it where you're main spool goes.  Some machines have a spot for an extra spool pin like this one.

Then you have to experiment.  Some machines will be happy if you thread both threads at once, some will only be happy if you thread one needle, then the other.  I had the best results when I threaded the right needle first and then the left.

Most info says to loosen the tension a little to avoid the seams puckering, this helped a little for me, but not really that much.  I just can't seem to get rid of the tunneling completely.  In any case, this is probably my neatest and most sucessful twin needling effort yet. (Just in time to be totally envious of Andrea's coverstitch).

Machines / settings used: 
Janome 7318 for sewing after I got it back.  I used a 2mm narrow-ish zig-zag

Brother 1034D serger sew the side and waist seams.
Differential Feed: 1.5
Stitch Length: 4
Stitch Width: 6.5
Tensions:  Didn't manage to record these :(



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<sup>1. Totally random thing, but it only just occurred to me while I was on this trip, that the song 'Holiday' by Madonna is not about a holiday as in vacation, but a holiday as in the 4th of July.↩
2. Discussed here by me, but originated here.↩
3. Yes, you're correct, I just figured out how to do footnotes, and I'm never going to stop!!↩</sup>