Custom Bridge

One More Try

~ Michelle ~ 2 Comments

I don’t know about anyone else out there, but having to wear a bra every day, I really am motivated to get the fit right. So, I decided I needed one more try. And that one more try was just the trick.

Using the half-size right in between the size I’d been working with for so long, and the next size up that was too big was brilliant! I woke up at 4:30 that morning and came downstairs to work on my bra pattern. And I have to say, after 2 years of trying, I was not really as enthused as I was say a year and half ago. I’ve had too many bras that weren’t what I wanted. I’m still wearing them, but perfection felt beyond my reach.

All that changed this week. I’ve found my size! Oh what relief. I encourage you, if you are still struggling, don’t give up.

So, let me take you back to my process.

I had what I thought was going to be my size. But I felt rather defeated thinking of the alterations I would have to make to a new cup because I knew the wire and cup size still didn’t match. The good news was this cup size is only two sizes larger than the wire size I need, and one size smaller than what I’d been using.

That got me thinking again; I knew from reading the Bra Makers Manuals that we can go up or down one wire size without changing the cradle. Okay, I was going to go up one cradle size. I traced out a 40 cradle instead of a 38. This now meant the cup I needed, which corresponds to a 42 wire was only one size away. Oh, the relief of that realization! I cut everything out and sewed it up as is – no alterations.

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Here’s the Pin Up Girls Classic pattern, as is, except I split the lower cup. There are a couple of pins in there trying to (unsuccessfully) smooth things out and get rid of the wrinkles on Catherine. This is my best fit yet. There are only a couple of minor fitting issues at this point. If you’re dealing with an Omega shape, I strongly recommend doing this – go up one cradle size. It will really help as there will be fewer alterations to do, or the ones you still do need to do will be less drastic.

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This will be one alteration I make to the cup. It gaps a little at the underarm. A tuck in the pattern there will eliminate that for future bras.

And the second alteration I will make to the pattern is the bridge. I made this one bra without any alterations to the bridge – so I didn’t use my custom bridge and it’s just too wide (I knew that) and too high. But just how much too high was it? That led to my second brain wave this week. I took my custom bridge at the full bridge height and drew 1/2″ line down from the top. Then another 1/4″ down and a second 1/4″ down.

Here’s my custom bridge with the first 1/2″ cut off. And that’s the exact amount I need to shorten it.

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Here’s a closer up picture showing the markings I made on the top of the bridge:

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I’d already snipped off the first 1/2″, so now I know how much I need to lower my bridge.

There were a couple of other things I’d said in the past I’d share, so I took pictures as I was sewing my bra. Oh, and a side note here, I signed up for Beverly Johnson’s Bra class on Craftsy and I had her explaining the steps as I was sewing. That was such fun. It was almost like having her right here with me.

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You can see here the bottom band elastic coming up under where the channeling will be sewn on. This just fits, but if it didn’t, here’s how you fix that.

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Fold the channeling over the elastic so you can see how much you’ll need to trim away. See that pink dotted line? If I needed to trim, that would be my cutting line.

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And here with the channeling out of the way again. Follow the curve of the channeling when drawing your dotted line (better than I did here) and you’ll have your exact cutting line.

I’m off to make those changes to my pattern and cut out another bra.

Happy creating!

A New Fantasie in the Works

~ Michelle ~ 2 Comments

I get emails from a few online bra stores. They’re full of bras, so full of design ideas. Does anyone else do that?

One came from HerRoom recently with a video attached. The video is part of a fitting series, and was talking about how the ‘center panel’ should fit. The center panel is what I’m familiar with as the bridge. I watched to see what they’d say because I’ve had so many issues with bridge-fitting. You can watch the video here.  A wonderful little extra right under the video is a transcript of the video. Here’s the part that got my attention:

“The center panel should rest firmly against your sternum. If it doesn’t, your bra cups are not deep enough so you need to go up a cup size. If your center panel is significantly pulling away from your sternum, you probably need to go up several cup sizes and down a band size.”

I knew a lot of the information in the video, including the information in the above quote, but it did give me reason to re-think my bra-making bridge issues. I had followed the instructions in the Bra Makers Manuals and ‘Frankensteined’ my bras that didn’t go all the way back to the chest wall. I did this more than once, and one of those times was with the teacher here. And even doing that. I did not get the fit I was looking for. After what felt like too many attempts, I’d given up. It was suggested I just use a lower bridge and that does work. But I’m not really one to leave things alone or give up. I wanted to find a solution to this.

So, with that very persistent personality trait, and the video stirring up questions in my mind, I thought about the RTW bras I have that fit with the bridge going all the way back to the chest wall. The Prima Donna bras I have do not do that. Neither the Deauville bra, nor the Duchess bra achieve that aspect of fit, but the Deauville is somewhat better. However, because they didn’t fit to begin with, I didn’t even look at either of those to help me in drafting a new pattern.

The one RTW bra I have that does achieve this fit level is the Fantasie Vivienne.

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This picture is from the internet as, at the time of this writing, I had not made a Fantasie clone yet. The cups on this RTW fit perfectly AND the bridge does go all the way back. But the bridge does not fit properly – it’s too wide. The wire is not the correct size either. Although it’s the closest I’ve ever found in a RTW bra. It’s even got Vertical wires. Those wires are one size too big. And too big is still too big.

I was thinking, if the bridge not going all the way back is a cup-depth problem… and these cups fit perfectly… then I can use the cups. And I’ll fix the bridge and the wire size. I’d want to fix the bridge, even if the other bridge fit better because I have a custom bridge that also adjusts for a flat spot. I’d also want to use the cradle I made for the Vertical wires I use.

Out came the pattern drafting paper, and I started to re-draw my custom bridge and cradle, starting with my wires. This method is described in the Bra Makers Manual.

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Here’s the first steps of that new bridge. You can see how it is the same shape as the Vertical wire. I felt like I was off to a great start here. I know the cups fit, so at this point no changes to them (at least not yet). And with the cups fitting, the depth should be spot on.

I now have a cradle and bridge drawn, and the bridge had the custom aspects added, and I have cups that fit. I’m feeling pretty confident at this point.

Now to address how some of the changes I’m making affect the cloned pattern I already have. I’m using a different wire and it’s not the same height as the wires that came in the RTW Fantasie.

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You can see the difference in the wires here. I have to say, although the RTW wires are a bit sturdier, they are a LOT less pretty to use.

I measured the difference between my new custom bridge and the cloned one, and took that amount out of the upper cup as well. It was only a 1/4-inch, so not a huge amount, but that excess still has to go somewhere. The next adjustments to make will be to the lower cup to help it fit into a smaller cradle.

As this is getting quite long, I’m going to sign off here, and next week I’ll have the conclusion of alterations and hopefully a perfectly fitting bra, with a full bridge that goes all the way back to the chest wall!

Happy Creating!

Kwik Sew 3300

~ Michelle ~ 5 Comments

This is such a pretty style. Here is my Kwik Sew 3300:

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I think it looks so pretty with the black and white theme. The lace was a gift, and the floral stretch lace is from a local fabric store. All other material supplies are from Bra Makers Supply.

It’s pretty, but there were a couple of fitting issues. One really wasn’t a biggie. This bra  had the straps pinned up about 2 inches here in the picture – so I shortened those.

The bigger fitting issue is the upper part of the cup is loose. I could pinch a quarter-inch out of the upper cup. That shouldn’t be too hard to fix on the pattern, and thankfully it doesn’t show when I wear it. This style actually fits similarly to how a foam cup bra fits.

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You can see here where I pinned the cup.

The steps I took beforehand really helped me to get the cup to fit properly. Here’s what I did for this bra (and some of this is from  past posts, but I’m putting it all together here):

The first thing I did was sew up a muslin for the cups. I did this twice. After looking at the pattern pieces, and picking the one I thought was closest to my size, I sewed up my first muslin. I used some scrap cotton I had left over from a skirt muslin I’d made. On this first one I could see how much I would need to adjust the pattern along the wire line. Remember, I my wear one size bra for the cups, but my wire size does not match that – it’s quite a bit smaller. So that was my first adjustment.

After I altered the pattern I sewed up another cup muslin. Again, I used some left over cotton, but this time it was from one of my moulages. This second one I pinned over an existing well-fitting bra. It was a pretty good fit at this point. But still needed a bit of adjustment. On this second muslin I drew where the seam lines fell underneath it.  Again, dealing with an Omega shape means most patterns don’t fit the way they are.

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At this point I was pretty sure I had the right size and shape for me. And I was really close.

This bra has a vertical seam, so no upper and lower cup, but instead and inside and outside cup. I was using lace for both the inside and outside cups, so I lined them both with sheer cup lining. That made both cups completely non-stretch to give it the support it needed. I’ve done this before on all lace bras, and it works great. I usually don’t use Lycra because I don’t find it offers the support needed, but using this sheer cup lining would be a great option for under Lycra too.

At this point I was feeling quite confident that this bra was going to fit without any issues. You see, most of my issues have been the bridge and the adjustments I needed for the Omega shape. I haven’t run into this looseness before.

I didn’t use the band that came with the pattern. I used the one I know fits wells. I now have a custom bridge that is working great for me and I wasn’t going to mess with that. As well, I drafted the cradle on my band to fit a Vertical wire and a custom bridge. After all the work to get the band to fit so well, there was no way I was going to try another band! All I was really wanted was to insert the 3300 cups into my band for a different look.

Even though this bra pattern still needs some tweaking, the steps I took ahead of time really were worth all the effort. And if you have challenges with fitting, I really recommend this method of fitting the bra cups. A shout out to Sigrid for sharing this. And after much searching, I realized it was not in her blog, but on Pattern Review. She explained this when she reviewed Merckwaerdigh’s BHST2 pattern. Really a great tip!

Happy Creating!