Every since my hubby’s business trip to Germany when I placed an order with Sewy, I’ve been thinking about the Sewy Rebecca pattern.

I’ve been wondering exactly how it differs from the Pin-up Girls Shelley because both patterns are very similar – power bar, lace upper cup, full band…

When you have a question like this, it’s just the kind of question to ask your very own Fairy Bra Mother. So I did. I asked her, “What is the difference between a bra that fits more shallowly (from my experience) and one that doesn’t?”

Beverly Johnson, (The Fairy Bra Mother), said she thought it all came down to bottom cup depth. Hmm. That gives me something to check into.

Now, let’s take a look together to see how much of a difference there is between the two patterns. I’ve compared them by wearing them, but not pattern piece to pattern piece. Well, there was one day when I measured all kinds of things on both patterns… but I didn’t trace them both out and compare.

Anyway. I’ve had a cold, felt terrible and didn’t want to do anything, but still wanted to get something done… so I pulled out my patterns and traced them off.

The Results

Here are the upper cups one on top of the other. The Shelley is traced onto  purple paper, and the Rebecca, yellow. Since the Sewy patterns don’t have a seam allowance, the Shelley has been trimmed of its seam allowances. I also made the split lower cup into one pattern piece.

The Shelley pattern piece barely peeks out from under the bottom of the Rebecca pattern piece, so to help us all out visually, I traced the Shelley onto the Rebecca with the dotted line. You can see the Rebecca is also straighter along the lower edge of the upper cup and is longer too.

You know how I said I had a cold? I had a little trouble naming these photos when I was saving them. I kept calling them all ‘Upper Cups’, so this one has the creative name of ‘No Really Upper Cups’.

Here are the lower cups of both which were saved under the file name ‘Upper Cups’. Sigh. The Shelley definitely has more bottom cup depth. The Rebecca is longer along the lower edge. Again, The Shelley pattern is on the purple paper in behind.

Lastly, here are the power bars, which I caught before I saved and changed their file name from Upper Cups.

I hope this helps anyone else wondering about the differences between the two patterns.

Happy creating!