And a matching bra!

Time seems to fly these past weeks! I didn't manage to do anything for Sew Grateful Week and, in fact I haven't done a lot of sewing at all.
I did, however, take a big hurdle on the 'sewing lingerie' front. 
Maybe it's just me, but I always feel like sewing panties isn't the real thing. Sure, panties are underwear, lingerie, dessous etc. They are just not that complicated. Bras are a different matter entirely. Even buying the right bra is something loads of women don't manage... 
Sizing- and shape-wise, it's a minefield. A minefield which I have (in RTW) so far been able to walk across at no great expense. Which is the benefit of a small cupsize. Recently, I bought some new bras because that small cupsize had become a bit bigger, putting me into an even easier-to-buy size (for some reason, my breasts grew from a 75A to a 75B this winter).
However... Maybe it's all the lingerie sewing going on in the blogosphere or maybe just the realization that I make all my other clothes... I had to try and make my own bra.

A few years ago, I followed M's lingerie sewing workshop, working on drafting and sewing bra and panties. It didn't amount to much because, back then, I was still using my first sewing machine: the knit-eating Toyota. 
The experience put me off sewing lingerie for a while although it did give me the background knowledge to try my hand at making swimwear (see my elaborate bathing suit and last summer's much easier bikinis). And somehow it made me justify buying lingerie supplies if I found nice ones, sold cheaply.

Last weekend, I decided to try again. I should add that I habitually complicate matters further by trying to draft my own pattern. 
Of course, I could have cut a corner there and bought a commercial pattern. The thing is, I'm so used to drafting my own stuff by now... And commercial patterns don't come with a fit-garantee either. And I really like how drafting something gives you an idea of how such a garment 'works', both in construction and on the body.
I had three different drafting tutorials to choose from: Magreet ten Dam's Een Tweede Huid (which translates as A Second Skin. The book has only ever been published in Dutch and has been out of print for years. It is highly sought-after which is why I only have photocopies of a few pages from M's copy), Ann Haggar's Pattern Cutting for Lingerie, Beachwear and Leisurewear and Pattern School's instructions on the subject.
I mostly looked at the books and found those to be very different in their approach. Ann Haggar has you make a zero-ease sloper and draft all bodywear based on that. This seems like a great way to deal with different body shapes and, according to the drawings in the book, would result in the 'downward hike' in the back strap which is the favorite way of may bloggers to adapt their bra patterns. The handling of cup size, however, seemed a big sketchy. 
Margreet ten Dam, on the other hand, has you draft the bra as a seperate thing and seems to focus completely on supporting to breast. Her method is based on drafting a 'standard size' sloper and grading that up or down to your size. This may sound complicated but it is explained really well. 
In part because I didn't have anyone around to take the kind of super-acurate measurements needed for a zero-ease sloper, I decided to go with the latter method.
I made one major change though: according to both books, a difference of 12 cm between underbust measurement and bust measurement puts me at cup A. But I have never known the sizing in any sewing pattern or drafting instruction to run significantly larger than sizes in stores AND I remembered that my first efforts with bra patterns from this book (the bra at the workshop and my first try at a bikini top last summer) were both clearly too small. So, I drafted a 75B. I made a muslin in non-stretch fabric and it fit. Succes!

Then, it was time to start on a real bra. Of course, I wanted to match the panties I had just made, so it would be in grey/green lycra and lace. Last week, I finally found non-stretch netting (at the market, costing only 1 euro a meter!) in a sort of skintone, so I used that to line the cups and to stabilize the front of the bra. In this I followed, what I found in most of my RTW bras:

Not only is the (in most RTW bras rather narrow) bridge completely rigid, there's a seam a couple of cm past the underwire, that's where the non-stretch interfacing ends (in the picture, you can see there are two layers of net left of the  bound seam). In many bras this is not just a seam, there's a tiny piece of boning there. As far as I know, this is especially useful in strapless bras and for larger sizes as it lends more stability to the whole thing.

I stayed pretty close to the original, full cup draft. I just lowered the center front a tiny bit and planned the placement of the lace. I'll wrestle with a tiny little seperate center front bit later...

The cups are lace over lycra, lined with the netting. I stabilized the front edges (and the top of the bridge, and those extra side seams) by understitching with a narrow ribbon. 

I see a lot of bras on other blogs which use normal picot elastic for the bottom band, but all my RTW bras use a more substantial elastic there. I had lots of nice, heavy black elastic (actually a 1.5 cm wide shoulder strap elastic), so I used that for the bottom of the bra. Because the colour didn't match, I stitched it on so it wouldn't show on the outside. If the bra is flat on the table, this stronger elastic causes ugly ruching at the front but this is pulled out when it is worn. 
At the top of the bra, I used the same satin edge elastic as for the panties. Unfortunately, I had forgotten to buy shoulder strap elastic in this colour when I bought the other bits. The beige straps are only there until I find some in the proper colour. 

It's finished now and it fits (although really not on the dummy, she has the weirdest breasts)! I was nervous about that near the end, fearing the cup shape was wrong after all and/or it was still too small. I guess it just looked small because I'm more used to foam cup bras and it really goes to show you can't really try on a bra until all the bits are attached.
I like the sort of baroque look of the floral lace on the cups and I like the proportion of bra and panties when worn. 
By the way, this picture on the dummy is the only one done with flash and, as a result it shows the colour most acurately.
Now, just one question remains:

Should I sew this little ribbon flower on the front, leave it plain or attach a little mother-of-pearl button, like on the panties?

P.S. I'm really getting into this bra-making thing. If you're interested I could do a post on the many issues of bra-sizing some day soon.

Tutorial Tuesday!

Once upon a time, I convinced my mother to let me make her something. She picked a pattern which was basically a poncho, made up of different squares of fabric. I made it in thin yellow silk, with printed silk for the center front and back pannels. This meant I had fairly large piece of printed silk left over. Now, my normal style of sewing and pattern making is rather tailored. With close fitting or sculpted volume, contour seams, pleats and darts. This thin stuff wouldn't do well with that treatment. So I decided to try something completely different, something... kimono-like.

Of course, I'm in no way claiming that this is a 'real' kimono, or a real pattern for it. I found a book on wearing kimono's in the local library which told me about the rich tradition and strict rules of the kimono. So I'm not going to mess with that.

I knew that, to result in something like the sketch, the tech drawing would have to look something like this:

Thanks to the book, I learned that the front pieces of a real kimono overlap and have a narrow pannel of fabric stitched to the main body to achive that. So the pattern would be something like this:

It's completely built up from rectangles which are traditionately about 30 cm in width. In Japan, that is supposed to be good for all kinds of body shapes and sizes and fabric is woven at this width especially for kimono's. However, western bodies tend to be a bit bigger on average than Japanese ones. In my kimono jacket, the rectangles are about that size, but for a Dutch girl, I'm rather small. And I just cut it in such a way that I would use all of the leftover silk.

When drafting your pattern I would recommend calculating the width of the rectangles as follows: measure you chest circumference (around the fullest part of your chest), divide the measurement by 4, and then add at least 5 cm to that (my chest measurement is 82 cm, a qua

rter of that is 20,5 plus 5 makes 25,5. So I was fine using 29 cm rectangles) . This will give the garment enough ease to fold nicely around your body. The width of the sleeve pieces is up to you, traditionately they're as wide as the body pieces but I made mine narrower to fit my fabric.

The narrower piece of fabric that creates the overlap at the front should be one third (or a little more) of the width of the main body pieces. The last straight piece you need is the collar. In the finished kimono, this piece will be doubled, so you'll need twice the width. My collar is 3 cm wide.

Do not forget to add seam allowance to all pieces. If you want to make french seams, you'll need at least 1,5 cm.

The length of all the pieces depend on the type of garment you wish to make. A traditional kimono is more than floor length. When worn, it's folded up at the waist. I made mine reach to my hips, but any length is possible.

For the neckline, draw a small curve at the back pieces (you could trace the neckline of something like a blouse pattern). Line up the front pieces (if you've made your pattern straight on the fabric, sew them together first, if you made pattern pieces, line them up, overlapping the seam allowances) and match them to the back pieces at the side seams. Draw the line for the collar from the curve at the back piece down and across the overlap.

sewing:

- stitch the back pieces together and front overlap pieces to front body pieces.

- sew shoulder seams

- sew one end of the collar along the collar-line. Make small cuts in the curved seam allowance at the back neckline. press seam allowance towards the collar. close short ends of the collar where they join the overlap and turn them right side out. press in seam allowance on the remaining edge of the collar and fasten to the other edge with small stitches by hand.

- determine how much of the sleeve you want to attach to the body and stitch it down.

- sew side seam and arm seam

- hem the kimono