By: Babs Woods

"anyone building a better bra?"



    Someone recently asked if anyone was building a better bra,
in the course of the discussion (sometimes heated) about making
bras and underwire and the difficulty of finding supplies and
so on.  This is what I've been doing, just so *I'll* have some
good bras to wear.  One thing I've discovered is that I may well
be able to nip down a deeper underwire size and retip to suit
my needs, so things are looking better, after all.  I may be able
to make bathing suits right this summer, after all, for me.

    As to my experiences with designing my own bras:

    In my estimation, what makes a properly fitting bra is:

Good support:  cups that fit all the way around each breast and keep
    them from sagging, straps that don't have to carry so much of
    the weight that they dig into your shoulders, not only
    permanently indenting them but adversely affecting circulation
    to and from the arms.  One factor is choosing wide-enough straps,
    so they're not so thin that they cut.

Good coverage:  modesty is an influence in how the cups should fit, with
    the exception of some deliberatly immodest cup styles.  Halters
    and bathing suits come to mind here, because they're outer
    garments.  Always be thinking about not only your audience, but
    whether this garment is to be used as an outer garment.

Snug-enough chestband:  this should not, as with straps, dig into your
    flesh, it should be snug enough to still be snug enough at the
    end of a long day, but not bind and dig.  It seems to me that
    when the chestband is too snug, it also draws the underwires
    into your ribs and will bend them along the lower cup side or
    the bottom, digging them into your ribs.  By the end of the
    day, this has been shear torture.

Underwires that don't poke:  it seems to me that if the underwire is
    poking someone under the arm it may be too long, a possible
    solution being to find or alter a design in which the cup side
    is a little lower, or use a slightly less deep (maybe by nipping
    and retipping) wire in that style or pattern of bra.


    I'm currently working on a 3-pc cup design which seems to
distribute support much better for me than the more usual 2-pc
baseball cups on the market and in patterns.  This is made with fabric
with roughly 25% stretch to it (heavier nylon tricot) similar, if not the
same, to that used in making RTW bras.


    With the current extended dance-mix version of this heat wave
I've lately been thinking about making some halter tops.  The first thing
I've had to do was to convert from a pattern which is built assuming
some fabric stretch to one I could use with woven fashion fabrics, like
a printed broadcloth, cut on bias.  What I did was to put on my trial bra
made from the tricot, and then to check the fit against a fabric with even
less stretch, having my husband measure the fit as I wore it.  I then
altered a copy of the pattern to fit for wovens.  I haven't had a chance
to make a woven trial, but this would seem to solve the conversion
question on such a fitted garment.  Measure how it fits, not just the
pattern.

    Another alteration was to add a chestband back (mine is of two
pieces) to the pattern pack that has an extended back to form a tie
closure in back.  This is an attempt to solve the problem of changes in
chestband size that multiple eyes in hook & eye closures is used for,
while maintaining the halter-not-bra style.