Making The Longline Lounge Bra: An Introduction

I like everything about making bras except the part at the end, when you try them on. That part inevitably sucks, I have to say - though, if your lot is to spend years trying to construct something successfully, only to have it elude you, eventually you stop having expectations that anything's going to fit.

That's its own kind of gift. See, today I got started at 10. By 2, I knew what wasn't going to work and I was able to rework the pattern pieces. A mere 4 hours to have been and gone (and taken pictures, if only metaphorically).

I've made so many bras, I scarcely need to glance at the instructions - though it behooves me to do so, a fact of which I'm well aware. I know I have to use adhesive glue to firm up my fashion fabric with power net. I know how to modify the suggested materials I use to produce a product with better support than the pattern would have you make.

People, this knowledge is saving me a lot of time!

Brief side bar: What I would give for even 5 minutes with the Empreinte sloper of my favourite pattern. If only I could visualize how to add coverage and an absurd amount of depth at the centre cup, without adding length (which simply produces gape), I would be SO grateful. No mind. It's only taken years, but I do feel I've sorted out my required shape and size for the outer cup and the need to reduce the length of the average back band by about 100 per cent. So I'm getting there.

Of course, I still don't have a finished bra, but I'm actually optimistic today. Today, I finally got to the point that when my first muslin failed, I walked away. (Well, after cleaning up.) I can't tell you how hard it is for me to do that. When something fails, I want to smack it into submission and win. But, you know what? The next muslin is also likely to fail. How long does it have to take me to learn this? Do I need to fail twice in one (excessively long, sweaty, miserable) day?

On the positive side, I'm much closer to a wearable finished product, after just one muslin, than ever I've been before. Sure, this is a wireless lounge bra; there is no goal to get the gore to tack (because without wires, if your breasts are even moderately projected, that will never happen). But even though I benefit from the relative ease provided by the style - by being able to forgo certain elements of fit - I'm doing pretty fucking well.

Next post, I'll show you how I've changed the pattern pieces and my rationale for doing so. I should have taken photos of the original pieces (no, I didn't trace), or at least of my original (highly modified) version of the flat pattern but, really, it doesn't matter. That version didn't work. I believe I know why. This process doesn't need to be rocket science. Two years of stupidly mathy analysis has not provided me with a handmade bra that fits. So what's the point of thinking that way?

This time, I'm going with my intuition.