Search This Blog

Saturday, February 24, 2018

Maya bra: attempt number 3. Third time is a charm, or not...

So, I barely know what I'm doing and I'm already addicted to bra making πŸ˜‚.

Since I'm out of bra making supplies I figured: what better place to find anything I want and need than in Amsterdam! Do you want to be overwhelmed by the amount of lace and huge color range of elastics? Kantjeboord is the place to be! πŸ‘€ I don't think there is 1 thing when it comes to lingerie and bra making that they don't have! Long story short, I ended up spending about 2 and a half hours in the store, buying many goodies!

I put together 4 bra sets and also got some extra elastics e.t.c.

The following day, thinking I've got a good fit already with my previous bra (well, the idea was there), I grabbed one of my kits and make another one!😁

I got my Maya pattern again and made a few adjustments to the bridge: I shortened it 1,5 cm and made it a bit narrower.

Browsing constantly though blogs and bra making groups, I saw many power bars and I thought they looked awesome! I came across this post and I thought, that looks easy enough, why not give it a try?!
I made a straight power bar from my lace fabric and added a bit of a strap extension to it. That went impressively well!πŸ‘Œ







This time though I wasn't going to make the same mistake I made twice before! No more flimsiness 😏! This time, apart from the lace, my wings also have a layer of lycra and my band has 1,5cm plush (!) elastic everywhere!





I used different padding foam for this bra than for the other 2 bras, this one is around 5mm thick! Nice and soft and at the same time stable.πŸ‘










I do like how it turned out although I would have preferred only the bridge in lace and the rest of the cradle in the purple lycra.









Unfortunately I didn't have any matching little bows to cover up the non-matching thread and the sometimes sucky stitch-work 😜

Enough about the looks, now the fit!😏
Yea, what can I say... The band is on the lose side, not a biggie,  that could be fixed. The bridge, even though I made it shorter and narrower, it still floats some and refuses to lay completely flat.
The cups sort of fit... there is no visible spillage and it's not gaping anywhere, so the first assumption is that the fit nicely.
But the whole bra doesn't fit great... It's not staying put where it's supposed to, it's wiggling around and it feels like it's ''floating'' around my body... It doesn't feel comfortable but it doesn't feel uncomfortable either. Now that I'm thinking about it, it kinda fits like some RTW 75D bras fit me.

At this point I have no idea what's wrong or how I can fix it, but I'm pretty happy I can at least fit in this one and wear it!😁 And if it fits similarly to some RTW bras I guess I didn't do a bad job when it comes to construction this time!😁














Monday, February 19, 2018

Maya bra second attempt: The disaster bra?

My first Maya came out beautiful but yea... that "little" problem with the size...

They say you have to make at least 3 bras from the same pattern to make it fit properly.
So yea, I printed a size bigger,75 E instead of what I've always been wearing: 75 D, and started on my second Maya bra.







I chose the 2 hook and eye version since that's the only closure that I had, together with a set of straps in white as well. I still had a very limited amount of bra making supplies so a white bra it is!I dug into my bag of lace again and chose a beautiful white lace!






Now the underwires... It's a long story and I'll possibly make a separate post regarding my search for the right underwires but I've ended up using push-up underwires suitable for 75F size (!) as regular ones.

I used the same padding foam as for the first bra and again only the lace for the band. The only elastic I had for the band was so flimsy but I didn't have anything else that remotely matched so I went with it anyway.

I followed the same steps as my first Maya while putting it together, a bit of  Ana's instructions, a bit of the instructions on the Makebra site and a little bit of improvising.

This one came together easier and faster than the first one (practice makes perfect?😜). The only change I made to the pattern was the back wings. Since they had to fit my one and only closure, the wings had to be smaller so I figured, why not make a U shape back? Because I didn't have enough strap elastic to use for the U back, I used the same fold over elastic as for the upper side of the band.










Much better than my first Maya! Well, this one actually fits!(Sort of..)😝

The cups fit almost perfectly, a little big on the top of the cups but no major problems! The bridge is a bit wide and a bit high so that's something I'll have to adjust for the next bra. The band though is even flimsier than on the first bra...πŸ˜–And then I looked closely at the elastic, guess what..? It isn't even plush backed elastic 😩 No wonder it's so flimsy, it's not made for the job...! The only thing I could do at this point was add some transparent elastic around my band and hope that it helps...πŸ˜₯
Yea, that helped already... I was a bit too enthusiastic about stretching it while sewing it on, guess what... now it's too tightπŸ˜‚πŸ‘ Gg me! Oh well, Roxanne is gonna wear it for a while, hopefully she'll stretch the shit out of that elastic πŸ˜….
And then there was this thing with the lace, there's a good chance the elastic in the lace is dead... I didn't notice of course before I made the bra... πŸ‘ŽπŸ˜’






Overall I'm pretty happy with it!😊 (Well, the pattern itself, not my awesome materials choice). I love the pattern and I will keep making Mayas till I get it 100% right 😁!