Bra success!

At last! Victory comes to those who, eh... DON'T GIVE UP ;)

As I've shown you before, I changed my bra pattern. Fortunately, I still had enough fabric, lace and assorted elastics and I thought I had found an underwire which would do. I continued sewing the new bra in little bits of time I could find for that purpose last week. In the end, it looked promising but I wasn't happy with that rather deeply curved wire. It seemed to leave and un-filled area below my breasts and fit just a bit too close at the sides...
So, I did something which is very new to me: I turned to the internet for supplies. More specifically, I googled Dutch sewing supply webshops (as awesome as Kantje Boord is, it's isn't really around the corner from where I live. It would take me half a day to get there and back. A great trip with a fellow enthousiast, but not that easy to fit into a busy week). The ones I looked at in detail were Danglez.nl (Melissa recently bought from that site and was happy with both the supplies and the service) and lingeriestoffen.nl. Both offer a wide range of lingerie supplies and, which was quite important to me, both sell underwires not just by circumference and cup size. Oh no, they tell you both the length of the wire and its diameter. Great! 
I ended up ordering from lingeriestoffen.nl because they sold wires closest in size to measurements I took from both my pattern and my existing bras. And because they charge a flat rate for shipment (as long as you don't order items which can't be packed flat, like foam cups), I splurged on some other lingerie stuff as well. 
I ordered on Friday evening and the package was in the mail today.

Look at all my new goodies...
I bought two different sizes of normal underwire, both close to what I thought I needed, to find out which of their sizes works best for me. I also bought a push-up wire, or more specifically, an underwire for a bra which is cut low at the center front. And black picot elastic, black bone casing, 6 spiral steel bones (I should have bought 8 or 9...), 1 meter of solid plastic boning and a piece of skin tone padding. 
The padding is for another bra, the rest of the stuff is for a lingerie corset I plan on making. 

But let's get back to that bra. As soon as I got my hands on the new supplies, I tried the underwires. The smallest normal ones fit just right into the casing and, more importantly, the bra fit really well with those in place (the bigger ones are just 1 cm longer. I think those may serve well in a bra with cups made from that thin padding).
So now, I finally have a me-made, me-drafted bra which fits well. In profile, the bust shape is different to what I'm used to. Definately a bit more pointy. I'm not alarmed by that because I know I'm used to bras with moulded foam cups and those things are positively globular. I think this bra follows the natural shape of the breasts more closely. 
And of course, I've been reading a lot of 50's magazines and in those days, the ideal shape was seriously pointy (not that they talk about such 'unmentionables' in magazines for good honest Dutch housewives...).

I think I should get back to sewing outerwear now but I'm already planning one or two other bras and, of course, that corset....