Sheesh! It seems like all I've done recently is blog about my bust. And here I go again.
I'm hoping that you can point me in the right direction with the FBA on my seersucker dress. I've searched high and low for an FBA tutorial specifically dealing with bustier style tops or for bras. No luck. So, I'm winging it. Here's where things stand:
I took a tuck down the center front to make the space between the cups closer together. And I enlarged the space that the cups fit into by basically tracing where the underwire of my bra hits and using that as the new seam line. (Compare left cup to unaltered right space-for-the-cup to see how much larger I needed it to be). As I had hoped, now that the bodice front seems to be the right shape and isn't pulling away from my body, the creases along the lower back have disappeared. Hooray!
The remaining problem is that I need to make the cups larger. In the picture above, what I did was let out the center seam on the cup and use a smaller seam allowance attaching it to the bodice. My problem is that the cups are too flat now - not rounded enough. I'm not really sure in which direction to add to the cup pieces - along the center seam? Along the seamline where it attaches to the bodice? Should I start by just cutting a larger size? Here is what the pattern pieces look like - any thoughts on how to make a cup size larger?
Anyway, your thoughts on this are most appreciated!
I'm hoping that you can point me in the right direction with the FBA on my seersucker dress. I've searched high and low for an FBA tutorial specifically dealing with bustier style tops or for bras. No luck. So, I'm winging it. Here's where things stand:
I took a tuck down the center front to make the space between the cups closer together. And I enlarged the space that the cups fit into by basically tracing where the underwire of my bra hits and using that as the new seam line. (Compare left cup to unaltered right space-for-the-cup to see how much larger I needed it to be). As I had hoped, now that the bodice front seems to be the right shape and isn't pulling away from my body, the creases along the lower back have disappeared. Hooray!
The remaining problem is that I need to make the cups larger. In the picture above, what I did was let out the center seam on the cup and use a smaller seam allowance attaching it to the bodice. My problem is that the cups are too flat now - not rounded enough. I'm not really sure in which direction to add to the cup pieces - along the center seam? Along the seamline where it attaches to the bodice? Should I start by just cutting a larger size? Here is what the pattern pieces look like - any thoughts on how to make a cup size larger?
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| The pattern pieces - upper and lower cup. |
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| My traced pieces |
11 comments:
This is completely out of my territory. I am very small chested :(
Good luck!
I wonder whether enlarging the pattern pieces on a copy machine, till they fit into the cup, would work. Perhaps also add more curve to the top of the oval-shaped piece?
Or you could trace a bra that fits and has similar seams, then go from there.
I think the official way would involve tracing the pieces, then cutting down the middle vertically and horizontally, pulling the pieces apart a certain amount, and filling in the space.
Good luck!
I think I can help you, but you need to answer some questions.
Do you think you will need to add length to the existing cups ie from the top to the bottom where the underwire is? If so how much?
How much do you have to add (best estimate) to the width? Measure from center front to the side. If so how much?
For some reason I can't post a comment on the summer dress blog, but I've posted a pic on my blog of what you need to do to the pieces to increase the cup size.
Good luck!
OMG OMG! ELMO you are a superstar!!!
Will answer your questions tonight!
So glad Elmo was able to help you.
so cool! did that work? I'm curious whether that got you more room where you need it. This is the kind of thing that my brain turns over and over when I'm trying to fall asleep, or on long drives, or trying to meditate- ha!
Do you have a bra pattern at home? You could take the cup size from the pattern and use that instead. That would be my best guess.I had this problem too with a strapless dress and just ignored it. Dont' do that.
Cidell - I don't have a bra pattern unfortunately. AND I've also done the "lets pretend there's no problem" alteration, and it didn't work for me either. LOL
Good call on enlarging the underwire area--I never thought to do that and think that is contributing to a "rippling" effect where I jammed larger cup pieces into the smaller diameter. :/ Also after I wrote up the same pattern on Pattern Review, I found a link to a list-serv "Bra Maker's FAQ"
http://www.funhouse.com/babs/BraFAQ2.txt
which explains the intermediate steps missing from both ELMO's reprint and the pattern book I skimmed (apologies, author). What we all need to do is track down Ms. Martensson's book for Kwik Sew and see the original illustrations from that!
Wow, thanks for the tip, Quincunx! I'll definitely be checking it out. I have a feeling I will make this dress again and would like to tweak it further.
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