Threads Magazine

Happy Australia Day and More

~ Michelle

I’ll start this post by wishing any and all Australian readers and friends a Happy Australia Day! My husband and I are part of the Australian Wine Club here in our town, and although I don’t drink, we have wonderful get-togethers and I enjoy them very much. We just celebrated Australia Day together and just look at our menu:

Pan Seared Chilean Sea Bass topped with Grape Tomato salsa, bedded with braised fennel

Wild Boar Consomme with Julienne green onion cake

Duck leg Confit & Port Belly, dried cranberry Saskatoon glace de viande, garlic asparagus & dilled baby carrots, and Potato & Yam pie

Sticky Date Pudding and Anzac biscuits.

It was delicious! We have such fun with our group.

But back to sewing and other crafts.

I completed my first-ever self-made pattern and sewed up the skirt. I mentioned previously the class Design and Sew an A-Line Skirt on Craftsy. Would I recommend the class? Well, I’m divided on this one.

In other classes I’ve taken on Craftsy the instructor has been great at getting back to anyone with a question. I can’t say the same on this one. I have contacted Craftsy about this, and they’ve been great, but my questions remained unanswered. That right there is why I don’t know I could recommend the class 100%

I did learn the basics of how to draft a skirt pattern myself, and how to do some basic alterations as well. I’ll be taking another go at it too, as this one sits too low for my liking. The instructor suggested a lower-sitting skirt as that’s more in fashion right now, but I’m not completely comfortable in it.

skirt

Here it is on me. It’s sitting about 2-inches below my natural waist. A pretty good fit though. So for that reason, I would recommend the class.

invisible zipper

And I’m thrilled with the invisible zipper here. Great instruction on that part.

I did use a longer zipper and shorten it. Thanks to Threads, I was able to do that easily. I found out an invisible zipper can only be shortened from the bottom. Threads is such a great resource! You can read about how to shorten a zipper here.

So will I recommend the class? I guess I will with one caveat. If you run into problems and ask questions, I don’t know if you’ll get an answer there.

Happy creating!

I’m Copying Again

~ Michelle

I’ve come full circle in my blogging. I started off with a blog called I’m a Copy Cat. Well, it’s been over a year of bra-making and I’d promised myself that even if I was hugely successful at bra-making, once a year I buy a good quality bra and copy it. I don’t know that I’ve been hugely successful, but I certainly can  make a bra.

So I went back to the boutique and bought one of those bras I’d tried on and treated myself.

Vivienne Fantasie

Here’s the bra I bought – but that’s not me in the picture. This is a very pretty bra, and I do like how supportive it is. It’s a Fantasie Vivienne in berry.

Once I got it home, something was bothering me a little. You know, just one of those nagging things in the back of your mind. Then I realized what it was – the underwires weren’t as big as some of the Prima Donna’s I’ve had in the past. The Prima Donna’s are really too big on me, but this one is only about a size too big.

I couldn’t figure this out. From everything I looked at in size charts, the wire should have been the same size of wire as the Prima Donna’s.

To begin, I got my stash of wires out and laid them over the bra’s channeling. I wasn’t getting a match though. This was really bothering me, so out came the seam ripper and I opened the channeling under the arm. I know how to fix it again, so I thought why not? Although I will say it was the first time I’ve ever ripped out stitches on a new bra!

I took out the wire and to my great surprise, it’s a Vertical wire! I was SO very surprised by that. I had to be sure though, so I went to Bra-Makers Supply’s web page and printed out their forms for Vertical wires. Just look under Information to Download, and it’s in that list.

Interestingly, the wire in the bra wasn’t quite a 44VW, but not a 42VW either. Just slightly bigger than the 42VW wire. When I tried the Vertical wires, I was informed that a 40VW corresponds to a 38 wire. I found the 40VW a bit small, so 42VW would be the size for me. And I find this only a tiny bit big. That means very little alterations for me!

And I’ve mentioned this before, but Vertical wires are a much better fit for women like me, dealing with what Beverly Johnson refers to in her manuals as the Omega shape. I had no idea there were bras on the market that used Vertical wires!

I also thought I’d mention a great resource, just in case you’re wanting to clone a bra. For me, it originally came from my first Threads magazines purchase. Sadly, it’s an out of print issue from Feb/March 2002 (#99). Beverly Johnson wrote an article called “Clone a Favorite Bra”. There’s a review of this article  on Pattern Review. I recommend it as well.

But don’t be discouraged that you can’t get that magazine back issue; the same information as the article is in the Bra-Makers Manual; the only big difference is the article had photos with it; the information in the manual has illustrations.

Happy creating!