Foam Cups

Making a Foam Lined Bra

~ Michelle

I had been asked a few questions on how to make a foam lined bra. Here’s what I’ve been doing.

The first thing I do is take my pattern pieces and mark where the seam allowances are. Most of mine are where the designer put them, but all my bras are adjusted for an Omega shape. And yes, you can do this if you have an Omega shape.

You’ll have to ignore the orange markings on the bottom of this first photo if you’re following along to do this yourself. You DO NOT want to cut that part off. The rest of the seam allowances you do cut off.

Here’s another example. You can see on the bottom here I’m not cutting off the seam allowance on the bottom of the pattern. You will need that – that is the part that is sewn into the cup.

Once you have cut off the seam allowances on your pattern, you have a foam cup pattern pieces that fit you and will line up perfectly with your lace cupped bra.

Sew the foam cups together with a wide tight zig-zag stitch. Once you’ve sewn your foam cups together cover the upper edge of the foam with fold over elastic.You’ll want to sew both the foam and lace cups into the cradle at the same time.

The underarm elastic will fold over the foam, so it only gets one pass of sewing (the second one) when sewing on the elastics there. 

Your foam cup is fully attached to the cup. It is attached at the bridge, fully under the cup, and at the underarm. It does not move. The foam cup is loose under the lace at the top.    As well, you can change the shape of the upper edge of the foam, and have some fun with the foam not being exactly the same as the cup. The foam on the cup above follows the curve of the lace cup.

On this bra below, instead of following the curve of the outer cup, I gave the foam more of an up-swirl towards the underarm.I do my best to line up the vertical seams on the foam with the seams on the cup.

I hope this blog post has answered all the questions you’ve had, but if you have others please let me know.

Happy creating!

Cut and Sew Foam Class

~ Michelle

Another class I took this Spring was the Cut and Sew Foam bra class at Central Sewing, again with Jeanette of Sew Uplifting.

In this class Jeanette was teaching us cut and sew foam drafting and construction techniques with our personal fitted bra pattern. Most of the class sewed a foam bra from our drafted patterns. We all also received the Ruby bra pattern. Jeanette brought in her own sample foam bra, and we all had to inspect every detail of the bra. One detail I noticed was she used jewelry findings for the rings on the front. I loved that detail!The fabric on this is so pretty.

Pattern Problems

 I have to say, I really didn’t enjoy the first day of our class. My drafted pattern, which fits, wasn’t converting to a foam pattern easily.

Here’s my drafted bra. This fits me perfectly.  To make the pattern work for foam, all we had to do was cut off some of the seam allowances. I did that. I did that three times.

Each time I did it, I kept getting the same result. I was shorter along the cross cup seam on the top than on the bottom. My pattern pieces were not fitting together. Jeanette looked at my pattern pieces, and she tried to make them work. She couldn’t figure out what was wrong with those pieces either. For whatever reason, those pattern pieces would not line up.

It was so frustrating. I was using my original pattern, and had transferred all the markings from it. I cut off the correct seams. It should have worked, but it didn’t. It was out by a 1/2-inch!

So, I finally decided I’d just add that 1/2″ difference at the underarm side, and hope for the best.

My Foam Bra

We used a lovely scuba for the foam bras, and they were all so pretty. Here’s mine. I’ve used the red and black floral scuba with all red findings, including red foam on the inside.

Here’s the side view, showing more of the red. One small disappointment was my band turned out to be too big. It’s not fitting well on the display either.Looking at it when I was sewing it, I thought it might be, so I just have the hook and eye tacked on here. I’ll take that off and trim off a bit from each side. After I measure and compare to a well-fitting band, of course.

Class Details

     One of the very pretty features we learned in our class was to do a rolled edge on our bras.Isn’t that a neat and pretty neckline finish? Below you can see it from the inside of the cup.We also learned how to stabilize our strap elastics to give better support. We’ve sewn non-stretch seam tape to the inside of our straps at the front. It’s nice and soft, and helps keep those elastics from stretching.

My Adjustment

 You can see here in the photo below how I added that 1/2″ to my foam upper cup.Have you been wondering how that adjustment turned out?

Well, let me just say I had two choices – I could have made it a little longer, or I could have made it a little shorter. My logic was shorter wouldn’t be better because it could end up too small.

And the results? My bra is 1/2″ too big at the underarm.

Sigh.

The good news is the bra is still wearable, and I’ve adjusted my foam pattern to account for that 1/2″ extra at the underarm. Why it wasn’t all lining up, I’m not sure I’ll ever know, but the pattern has been corrected and is good for my next bra now.

Happy creating!

How I Fit my Dress Form

~ Michelle ~ 2 Comments

I was recently asked where I found a dress form that fits my bras. The woman asking has a small back, but larger bust and has been working with a Fabulous Fit dress form for years now and still can’t get the fit right.

This is a challenge for me too.

You can see one of my bras here on my dress form. I’m always saying my dress form, Catherine, and I are not the same size. I’m going to show you just how different we are.

Dress form STUFFED.

I never thought I’d be stuffing a bra, but I do. On a regular basis too.

Dress form naked.

Here is Catherine without one of my bras on her. I put a necklace on her because, well, I just like to do that.

Here’s a side view of her.

Catherine isn’t a sewing dress form. She’s a display form for stores. She’s very basic. You can see she’s is smaller proportioned all around. We’re the same in our shoulders and rib cage. Other than that she needs to be padded out to show how anything fits on me.

Here Catherine is wearing a bra, but no stuffing or padding at all.

Now we know what Catherine has; you can see how much I’m filling in to make the bras fit her.

Tools of the trade.

Here are the tools I use to pad Catherine and make my bras look better on her.

First, and maybe all you’ll need depending on your size, is a pair of foam cups in the same size as your bra cups.

I’ve used both foam cups I’ve purchased and ones I’ve made from Cut & Sew foam. For this use, I’d recommend purchased ones. They’re a little sturdier, and I’m wanting to fill out the cups on my bra while it’s on my dress form. They’re also rounder, so give a nice shape behind the cups.

The second tool I use is a circle of cotton Lycra filled with plastic beads. It can shape itself around the smaller breast shape on the dress form and give a little more backing behind the foam cup.

The Process

Now let me show you how this looks and changes with each step.

Here’s the bra with a foam cup only filling in the cup on our left.

That’s better than nothing, but still not as good as I’m wanting.

Next I put the circle in.

You can see both the foam cup and the circle inside that bra cup.

And here’s what it looks like with both tools inside the cup on the dress form.

That’s much better. Not perfect, but much better. Both of these tools can be moved around in the cup as well, so depending on where the wrinkles are, I can move these to fill that area of the cup out a little more.

Here are both cups filled out now.

With both the foam cup and the circle form, I help my dress form be closer in size to me and make my bras look nicer for photos.

I hope this helps!

Happy New Year & happy creating!