Tag Archives | bramaking

Byzantine Lingerie Set

January 17, 2012 Comments

That is no country for old men…

This set turned out much more engraved and ancient-looking than I anticipated. I was thinking it’d be just a step up from my first two bras, a lacey black number with a bit of nude accent. But these fabrics were much less shy in person than in their online pics. The lace has a strong horizontal medallion design with metallic threads, and the lycra leans in a more bronze-taupe than nude direction. It’s hard to convey metallics in photos but it’s pretty dramatic.

As I was cutting it out, I could see I’d have to play intentionally with the strong; otherwise it’d go in the direction of Atlantic City bling. Not that I have anything against that… ironically. I was telling Derek, “this thing is going to be, kinda, um… Byzantine! Yeah.” Historic bling! And of course we immediately started discussing Yeats and what that might have to do with bras. Put two former lit grads together and you get lots of obscure writer jokes. (“Prufrock’s, like, my mantra!“)

Aesthetically, I’m in love. And at the moment, I feel I have found one of my “callings” as a dressmaker. I feel pretty stress-free about making lingerie and even possibly wasting fabric on experiments. Okay, bras don’t consume much anyway, but I also love working small and up close. (My favorite photos are macros of things like insect legs and iris veins.)

I still have some things to sort out fit-wise. The bra pattern is Pin-up Girls Classic bra in a 32B. In my last make of this I’d worked out a vertical seamed cup and for this new bra, I’d intended to make the entire cup of lace. Unfortunately the design was too directional and the repeat pattern too large to cut mirroring pieces. So I went back to the original horizontal seam and used lycra for the bottom cup. I still had a bit of lace left to squeeze out for the front band and bridge.

I’m learning that every fabric and lace requires little construction decisions along the way. I kinda like the puzzle. For example, even just a couple of mm difference in elastics might mean trimming or lengthening parts of the pattern or working around it. I may have jumped in too fast with such different fabrics than my last two bras but I’ve learned a bit more about bra fabrics. I had to rip out every seam at least once. (Ripping out serged stitches is a dream compared to the 3-step zig zag.)

These fabric and notions were all from e-lingeria. They have the loveliest stretch laces so I ordered a few at once to make the shipping from Germany worthwhile. Their kits for bras and panties include what they call “lycra” for both cups and bands, and it feels kinda like the lycra fabric in bike shorts. It’s kinda thick compared to other bra fabrics I’ve browsed. I’m assuming it’s nylon and stretches like its got about 10% lycra. As a band fabric, it’s quite comfy and good enough for support in a smaller-cupped bra.

Because it was so stretchy I figured I’d need to stabilize it for the cup. Thankfully I’d ordered some extra meterage of sheer nylon tricot, which I used as a second layer and lining. I got the idea to enclose the seam in the lining from a tutorial at Summerset’s blog. My results look clean but made for a very bulky seam, and after topstitching the seam became wavy and rigid.

And in the end, the lining didn’t seem to prevent the cup from growing in size. I probably should’ve just interfaced them instead. Or perhaps next time will have to cut the pattern smaller to accommodate stretch.

The matching panties are from Merckwaerdigh Mix 30. I like the general shaping of these–they fit like lower-cut briefs, and would be easy to change around to other styles.

I guess my lesson learned is that stretchy cup fabric does not make a good beginning bra experience. Just be warned, if you ever go for one of the ready-packaged e-lingeria kits. Kits are a great way to start because you get all the elastics and hooks and things that match. I wasn’t too happy with the elastic quality of these kits, either. (The elastic in the panties lost all their stretch after one wearing.)

On the notion-y goodness front, Wonder Tape is my new sewing BFF. (That and bra pads, which will make this bra wearable!)

I kept seeing folks on sewing boards extolling its goodness but had no idea what it was, either. It’s a roll of double-sided sticky tape in a teensy 1/8″ width that later washes out. It’s a great thing to have around if you make alterations a lot, too–like hemming.

Phew. That was a lot. That’s what I get for not blogging for two weeks. And with that I’ll leave you with my favorite bra of the week:

This is a simple but lovely long-line bra by Fortnight Lingerie. They’re a cut-and-make boutique company out of Toronto, and used to have an Etsy shop until recently. (You can some of their pretty things at Lille.) A friend of mine asked me what these kind of vintage-style bras were called, having noticed them popping up more frequently in fashion. A long-line is basically like a regular bra, except the band that goes around the cups is wider. It’s definitely a comfortable, supportive option for bigger cups without needing underwires, and I’m glad they’re getting a revival and making their way out of a niche market. Plus they’re just so dang cool.

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The Hidden Things

December 23, 2011 Comments

Oh Austin, I love you.

{Sign on Silk Road Fabrics.}

Something about this struck me as very typical Austin. That people here who don’t generally suffer from workaholism. That there are still places one has to find by accident, or in this case rely on word of mouth for opening hours.

Austin is one of those rare cities that has the kind of places one must stumble upon. Groovy restaurants that haven’t been Yelp-ed and mapped and Twittered to death. It’s got a fair share of the Secret South. (There’s an art collective literally hiding in a forest.) The sign might be spray-painted, the pedestrian traffic nil, but those homemade Mexican grandmama tortillas are the secret everyone loves to keep secret, or just recommend the old-fashioned way. It’s one of the reasons Derek and I gravitated here. We always call it a haven for creative people; it’s urban but incredibly easy to be an artist and live an artistic lifestyle without a competitive strain to prove oneself.

Silk Road used to be just a walk away from our neighborhood, in a lovely little cottage that was torn down a couple months ago. (Sigh, no more fabric sources for me that don’t require a driving haul through a labyrinth of Austin traffic.) Long before I got back into sewing I used to browse the exquisite silks and walk out with a couple glass buttons. They have gorgeous linens too–my first-ever fabric purchase in Austin eventually became the wide-leg trousers. Last year they moved deep into the East Side, still a source of hidden creativity despite upscale development. I had to turn around twice at the train tracks before I realized the store was inside the Flatbed coop.

Now here’s a place I’ve heard about but never visited. The closed doors of Silk Road sent me wandering instead around this heavenly mothership of all things printmaking.

All in all, a very Austin experience… where you end up when you were looking for something else.

Anyhow, this would’ve been the one local place I’d find some lovely lace trims for Sherry’s Ruby Slip. I’ll have to wait. I’m finding a bit of pleasure in that, too–the pleasure of the waiting, of finding the one thing that can’t be found by anyone else.

This is about lingerie, I guess, in a roundabout way. In lieu of a slip, I made a new bra over the weekend. I wanted to sew another one fairly soon after my first try, to refine fit and design changes while the experience was still fresh in my mind.

It’s still plain and super cutesy pink, but I wanted to use up the fabric and notions I got from Bramakers Supply to test my changes. I tried changing the pattern to a more vertical seam and went to a full-band bra. I also went down a cup size, which fit just perfectly despite my worries on the first bra. (My first was a modified 32C, which as it turns out was a bit of wishful thinking!)

My sewing will stop for two weeks as we travel abroad, but my first order of sewing business in the New Year will be a luxe version of the bra from this lace-like gilded lycra. It came all the way from Germany via e-lingeria.de and took almost two months, but I am so pleased. Gorgeous stuff.

Have a wonderful holiday, and I hope that true and meaningful secrets are revealed to you!

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Bramaking and Dreams of Stella…

November 11, 2011 Comments

Frankly, I could fill a whole drawer with Stella McCartney bras.

So pretty, girly, vintagey. Earlier this year I indulged a visit to Underwear, a local lingerie boutique and got to touch and try some of Stella’s bras in person. The laces and materials are as pretty and soft as pictures seem to show.

Although if I really had the dough, it might be a luscious set from Carine Gilson, a Belgian lingerie maker.

Lovely lovely lovely–silk appliqued lace!–and putting one out, oh, about $500 for a bra.

If there was one thing I’d love to sew for other women, it’d be bras. Body confidence is such an intimate and complex combination of things, but I’ve noticed when clothing fits and seems mysteriously made for someone’s exact body, it can really affect a sense of self. It’s amazing how beautiful, great-fitting undergarments can imbue confidence and celebration of one’s body.

I know y’all have those pilling three-year-old bras in your drawers. Most of the time I’d rather be buying shoes, and I get lazy and ignore the bra needs until the elastic is beyond dead, but when I finally replensish with just one or two sweet bras that fit, I feel like the rest of my clothes are fun all over again. Bonus.

I like pretty underthings but have never found a style that feels like the magical “it”. Fit and comfort gets sacrificed for style or vice versa. I’ve gotten spoiled by getting more fit-conscious as a sewer, I’m sure. Anyway, I fall in between sizes–either a 32B or 32C or 34A depending on the manufacturer–and almost always look for demi-cup styles. Soft-cup and bralette types are very comfortable and perfectly fine for me, but sometimes a smaller gal likes a shapely underwired bra.

Seeing the beautiful bras on Novita’s blog gave me motivation to pull out the bramaking kit I’d bought over a year ago from Bramakers Supply. The kit included all the notions and fabrics for one bra, along with their “Linda” bra pattern. The fabric for cups is Duoplex, a kind of shiny non-stretchy type of knit, and the band fabric is powernet. Not exactly my dream bra fabric but I really needed the hand-holding of a pre-assembled kit.

According to the pattern, I measured a 32B, but I decided to test out the underwires first. The wire for a 32C felt more comfortable and was closer in diameter width to my closest-fitting bra, a 32B. I decided to forge ahead and make the 32C pattern but with the depth of the B cup. I did this by splitting the B cup and spreading it out to the width of the C, making sure the underwire length was the same.

The construction itself is fairly easy–working with small pieces leaves so much less room for error. The seam allowances are small and exact. The instructions on this pattern are very clear and detailed. There were a couple of hiccups, though… One was getting the trim sewn on neatly where the bridge and underwires intersect. I fudged it enough to work…

blech…

The other had to do with what might be a pattern error along the center back.

The pattern calls for a 2-hook closure (and is what came with my kit), but the band seems accidentally drafted for 3 hooks. I fiddled with the elastic till it curved correctly into the hooks, but in the future, I probably won’t use 5/8″ elastic–seems unnecessary for a smaller bra.

The final bra feels pretty close and fits well enough to wear, although I think I’d like to test out the 32B pattern separately. There’s only so much one can tell from fitting the cups. I really had to complete the entire bra to get an idea of fit and once it was all together the bridge seemed a little narrow, the underwires too close together. (In bras, as cup sizes increase, the bridge gets narrower.)

The question becomes, what shape is supposed to be happening and how close of a “natural shape” do I want?

The full-coverage style of this pattern is pretty new to me. It might seem cute on the hanger but it’s a tad medical-looking on the body. I’d love to modify or try something closer to a demi bra or a contour t-shirt style, which could certainly change the fit. Most of my bras also have a vertical seam or dart (like the Stella and Carine Gilson bras above) rather than the horizontal seaming of the bra pattern. It seems a bit old school, but maybe that’s just an association I have. But I look forward to re-shaping and playing around the the design details in future bras.

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