The Bra Sale / Give-Away: How it Works

The next time I get even the slightest bit snitty about people and their out-of-control collections, remind me that I spent an entire day yesterday coming to terms with the fact that I have 29 bras to redeploy. Yeah, you read that right. My little bra sale is basically a store's-worth of merchandise - fucking awesome merchandise - albeit in a fairly narrow size range.

This post is to give you a sense of my proposed process. Next post will provide details on the brands and styles on offer, including "pricing". My goal is to show photos and to link you to any posts I've written on the bras in question.

Note that I am happy to simply give away 10 of the 28 bras - not because they aren't in good shape (I wouldn't ship anything in less than good shape) but because it's fun to get free stuff, don't you agree? My preference is to provide the freebies to people who are already purchasing at least one other bra but, if your boobs are in need and you don't have disposable income, get in touch. This is about bras finding great homes...

FYI, in some instances the bras retain their style/laundry labels (on bra band) but, because I hate the feel of tags, in some instances, the label has been removed. Needless to say, I can vouch for the pedigree and size of all bras, but if style labels are important to you, let me know.

As I've mentioned on a few occasions, I'm not prepared to offer up my bra size for the pleasure of the interwebs - I have workmates who read my blog (not to mention that I'm old-school). What I will say is that the bras on offer span 28 - 32 band size and the majority are 30s or 32s. I'll also say that these bras, in general, suit a full bust measurement that is 37 - 39". If you think we're in the same size range, and you're interested, email me and I'll give you all the deets.

The Process:

• I'll post info about the bras available, including pricing. In general these will be free, 5 bucks or 10 bucks. There will be 2 exceptions: I've got 2, frankly spectacular, Empreinte bras - each worn twice - to sell at a price that will be significantly higher, tbd. I've also got 2 bras that are new, with factory tags (aka never worn) and those will be listed at 15 bucks each. For what it's worth, my pricing system is 10 bucks for bras in new condition (worn fewer than 5 times and often not more than twice, simply to verify that they weren't for me), 5 bucks for those with slightly more wear and free for those that are discontinued / from many seasons ago (note that these are some of the cutest). It goes without saying that none of these show signs of wear. When you have as many bras as I do, it's tricky to wear anything more than 5-10 times, unless it goes into regular rotation (and those I wouldn't re-sell).

• If you like anything, please email me at kristinm100 at yahoo dot ca. This is when we can chat at length about any bra that appeals. Y'all know that's my fave thing to do. So, if you want to know specific size, how it fits, wire-width, what root it would best suit, how the band stretches in comparison with other brands or anything else, get in touch! I'm here to help you find the right bra.

• If you'd like to buy, I'll calculate the shipping and let you know how much extra that will be. Note: If you live in a large city in US or UK, it'll be around 8-10 bucks (NO tracking, cheapest method). If you're on another continent, in Canada (absurdly) or in the middle of nowhere, the price is likely to go up to around 15 bucks. If you want tracking, that's cool, but it will cost extra. If you purchase and the parcel goes missing, alas, I cannot bear responsibility. It generally takes 2 weeks for things to get from here to there. No returns, thanks.

• I'll email you the total fee and request payment by PayPal. Once I receive the payment (all in CDN funds, btw), I'll mail your fab little parcel.

So that's that. Please stay tuned for more on this and, of course, if you have any questions - comment (or email) away!

Black and White

The terrific thing about the "one in / one out" policy is that, when you cull 8 29 bras from your wardrobe, you're well within rights to purchase two :-)

And there are two I've had my eye on for a long time.

The sporty:

Cleo Minnie and Brief

And the sexy:

Masquerade Persia and Brief

What can I tell you about each?

I've read that they're both very projected bras (especially at the centre gore). They've both got narrow wires (in the scheme of things) and they're both lauded for fit.

You'll note that they're both riffs on basic black. The Masquerade was discontinued some time ago but it's still available in some sizes on eBay. In truth, I'd have preferred the blue version - but it wasn't to be found in my size.

The Cleo is a popular bra that's still being produced. I'd also have preferred this in the blue/gold colourway (of a few seasons ago) but had to go with the colour way available in the appropriate size.

Having said this, I'm not in any way feeling flirty or floral. These days, I like the binary, low-key quality of black and white.

My concerns about each are these:

• They close with 2 hooks and eyes (vs the 3 I prefer, especially since comfort is key and I'm trying to deflect pressure against a wider portion of my back torso).

• They're known for being snug in the band. I've sized up to a 34 in each (and I'm willing to use an extender as necessary) but who knows how these will be, especially when you add in the factor of bullet point above. There's no way I can size up in the band more than 34. At that point, the scale of the bra becomes too wide for my frame (and the wires too wide for my breasts).

• I've never tried a Masquerade bra (thought they were popular before the brand folded into Panache - and was rather decimated in the process), so I don't know if it is a comfortable brand.

• Cleo bras aren't known for their comfort at the end of the day - I can say that with experience. Mind you, I've never gone up to a 34 back in this brand...

What have I done to mitigate this concern? Well, I opted to size up, not only in the band, but also in the cup. Of course, this is likely to backfire completely, especially measurements I've been able to determine, but I can return each set - as necessary - so I'm calling it a good experiment. (I'm just so sick of feeling swollen pretty much everywhere, 75% of the time... I figure, if this fails, at least I will have given it a go.)

Furthermore, I managed to get very reasonable deals on both sets. Including shipping and currency conversion (GBP), each was 50 bucks.

I seriously considered yielding to my latest bra tingle with Empreinte, but seriously, that would have cost me 3 times this total price for one set alone. I can't justify that expense right now. Mind you, I wear 90% of my Empreintes into the ground - and they last, in regular rotation, for years, not to mention that they're insanely comfortable, especially in the band.

FWIW, I do intend to sell one or two in the upcoming bra sale (cuz they never fit right - they were purchased online so I couldn't try them on for fit) but please note, I do intend to charge for those. Not so much that I'd even come close to breaking even (by a long shot) - but for bras that retail at 200 bucks (and that have been worn twice), I've got to charge something.

If these Cleo and Masquerade are duds, I'm going to return them and give the (very projected) Polish brands one more go. And if that process becomes too complicated (getting bras from Poland is quite a production), I'm going to accept that I'm the kind of woman who will buy a couple of Empreinte sets a year, and call it a day.

Thoughts on these bras? Have you tried them? Do you like them?

Scattered and Focused

Ahoy hoy lovelies. Got a lot of stuff on the go this weekend - including de-lining a pair of RTW pants (the seamstress wanted 35 bucks?!), making a new McCall's 6844 (to suit my latest alterations) and organizing the bras I've either never worn (or rarely wore) for another little bra sale.

More on bras to come but I do want to say that I'm not selling for profit. This is about making sure that great bras - which don't suit me - find wonderful new homes in which to thrive. I'll charge 5-10 bucks per bra, depending on wear and pedigree, (which is simply to make it worth my effort to get my ass to the post office) and the actual cost of packaging/shipping (which will not marked up). You should know, however, that depending on where you are, that shipping could easily run 15 bucks because I live in a country with a stupid postal service that obviously doesn't care about survival.

A propos of this, I'm on a mission (and it's not pretty) to divest myself of any lingerie that no longer works either because of size (I've decided to buy 34 bands for the foreseeable future because my body just can't manage a snug band at this point, without triggering pain. I have many 32 bras that still work with extenders (or because the bands were never snug 32s), but the tight ones are on the chopping block.) I've also thrown out every pair of undies that doesn't fit perfectly. And that's more than I'd like to admit. No question, my body is different now than it was 2 years ago. It's not fatter, per se, but it's not as small. My midsection has expanded, despite careful eating and exercise. And I'm not going to shove myself into things that don't fit perfectly - especially underwear! These days, it's impossible not to dwell on body image, vis a vis mid to late-stage perimenopause, and I'm sure there's a post in it - if not 5. Truth is, I'm so confused by it (in some ways), that I'd prefer not to entertain the subject.

Not to mention that one does begin to adjust to the new landscape. You cannot remember who you were at 22 (even if you think you do). You don't remember every supple curve, skin tension, clarity, bounce and fullness. Sure, I know that I'm not as I was (or as I might be if my livelihood depended on being stridently slim). I mean, I changed substantively at 30, for having had a baby - never to return to my pre-maternal shape - but I regained equilibrium and, in some ways, became more physically attractive than I had been before. I just wonder how this will all reflect itself in my latest meaningful female life transition.

Anyhow, that's what's on my agenda, given gloomy weather which is - to its credit - super warm (8C). Stay tuned for more.

Today's questions: When's the last time you went through your bra and undies stash to determine what simply isn't going to work anymore? How often do you do this and under what circumstances. I do it at least once a year - though I have to say, I don't usually cull as much as I've done this go round. How do feel if you discover that your body has changed and your lingerie wardrobe isn't working? Gotta admit, there's a part of me that's sad (because I've loved my bras or because I don't like the direction of change) and another part that says - bring it on, more bras to replace the old ones!, more chances to see myself anew. At any rate, let's talk!

A Better Second Effort

Gotta say, this project has been a fun fitting exercise. (I swear, I'm not being sarcastic.) Here's a pic of my second version:

I made it using a new blue ponte that I found at FabricLand on Saturday. Lord, that place is a squat. I half expected a rat to scurry by. There were a mere 10 fabrics - amongst hundreds - that I'd ever want to own. The notions section was wan. It's located in the basement of the former (equally hideous) Honest Ed's. Best I can say is that it's very convenient and the prices on fabric are reasonable.

But never mind that, let me tell you what I learned this go-round. It's fascinating!

Kristin's Next Version Alterations:

• Gotta lengthen the bodice by another 1.5 inches below the waist. It makes sense really, a certain amount of length is being taken up by my bust. This length of this muslin will be fine but, because I shortened the armcye depth (last time) from both the underarm curve and the shoulder seam, I've got to add a bit more length still, at the hem. 

• OK - this realization is game changing: You'll note that, while the jacket is quite fitted through the back body (sorry for the crap photo, but look at the waist)...

Now that I've narrowed the shoulders (re: last muslin's lesson), it doesn't fit the dress form any longer... That's why you can see pulling at the upper back.

...you don't get any sense of that shaping from the front (see first photo). Why? well because of this:

Do you see how the top stitched vertical seam highlights that the collar panel meets the princess side front piece totally straight i.e. perpendicular to the floor? There's no shaping of the side front. That's why the front body is swimming in fabric. For my money, that's shoddy drafting cuz just about every woman would benefit from some contour there.

If I want the kind of shaping in the front that I have at the side waist, I'm going to have to shape the collar / side front seam by tapering from just above the waist to 0.5 inches on either side of the hem (1" total).

Here's what I mean:

The left piece is the altered side-front and the right piece is the altered collar.

In the unaltered version, the two pieces would touch from half way down, at the full bust point (where you see that they meet), all the way to the hem.

I took an inch of width (total) from the front seam below the waist, the net effect of which should be that the front seam will contour, like the side seam. Where those 2 seams go from the convex to concave curve is where the jacket will suck in. At least that's my theory.

This second muslin is a much better fit than the first - particularly in the shoulders - but I'm not done yet. Without side-front waist shaping, the net effect of this piece (on a full-busted frame), is sack like. That's why every finished version you find on the internet is belted. All the busty ladies, thrilled by the thought of a constructed sweater / stretch jacket that will fit over the boobs, may manage to fit this in the shoulders, but the line is still boxy.

If I've managed to create a fitted silhouette with this new alteration, I can assure you that I'll be making this thing again in every fabric - including stretch suiting.

Tomorrow it's back to FabricLand for another yardage of this blue ponte. No sense in wasting the half metre I have left. And it's a nice fabric esp. for 10 bucks a metre! Gotta see if my experiment works. I'll keep you posted...

Assembly Line

Can't tell you what I kick I get out of making skin care:

Those three iron nails (in the background) are 125 years old. When we did the third-floor reno, we found them in the walls.

• Neroli eye balm. This stuff is NICE. (Neroli hydrosol, apricot kernel oil, rosehip seed oil, emulsifing wax, vitamin E oil, carrot seed EO, lavender EO, ylang ylang EO, Germall Plus preservative)
• Grapefruit/Rosewood body oil
• Face Serum A

 It's so easy to give this stuff away!

I now make my own body oil, eye balm, face serum, hand cream, lip balm, arnica salve and calendula salve.

How much would I spend on that if I bought it? Just so happens I can tell you:

• Body Oil (Weleda) - $25
• Eye balm (L'Occitane) - $70 
• Face Serum (various) - @$70
• Hand Cream (various) - $20
• Lip Balm (Korres) - $15
• Arnica Salve (Thompson's) - $15
• Calendula Salve (Thompson's) - $15

Costs a fraction of this to make your own product and it's fun!

(Next up: Roll-on oil perfume, solid perfume and handmade deodorant.)

A Good First Effort

Every since I saw this version of McCall's 6844, I knew I'd have to make it. Not that I made the same version...

Here are the options:

Allison made view B. I opted for view A cuz I'm petite and I thought the proportions would suit me better. I think that's true, but Lord, what a sizing stupidity this pattern is...

For starters, here's what mine DOESN'T look like, in real life:

Yeah, it photographs like crap. It would appear that there's no waist shaping (and admittedly, there needs to be more), but when worn, it does provide an hourglass silhouette, I swear.

It's the stupid dress form that's uneven - not my work!!

Here's a side view of the subtle high-low thing it's got going on:

And here's a shot of the shawl collar from the back (I seem to have cut every other shot at the neck):

It does seem very shapeless here, no? Partly, that's cuz I cut the size the instructions advised I should make (from finished measurements provided) - the medium - and it was ridiculously large. I mean, the finished bust measurement is NOT 36.5". I can wrap it 3 inches at the boobs (unheard of for me) and it's just supposed to touch at the placket. Hilariously, the instructions indicate I should actually have cut the large. WTF?!

In the end, I reworked this in pre-muslin alterations, and then again thereafter, so that my next version will be between an XS and an S.

Be warned, narrow people (and quite independent of the vanity sizing), this is designed for a broad-shouldered broad. I had to totally rescale it at the shoulder - like removed 2 inches plus from each outer shoulder?! My next version will be cut smaller than the XS at the shoulders. But make no mistake, if you don't get the fit in the shoulders this jacket will look totally amateur. Its strength is all in fit and fabric choice.

What you can't see in my photos is that, at the sleeve head where it meets the shoulder, there's a lip of 1/2 inch of fabric stuck between the original serged seam and my "ensmallening" seam, because that's how much more fabric I had to shave off the sleeve head and shoulder. After removing inches of width before cutting?!

But just for a change, I used the (appreciated) petite fold lines (there are 2 - one below the waist and one above) and my finished product is on the edge of being too short?! When has that ever happened?! The next version will be an inch longer because I've reverted the "below-waist shorten" to its original length.

I used a gorgeous denim ponte that looks grey in every photo but is actually a stone-washed blue. Trust me, it's elegant. The fabric is the perfect weight so that the jacket hangs like a blazer, not a cardigan. Mind you, if you were to use a sweater knit or a drapey rayon, it would look totally cardigan - and I don't think that's its best iteration. FWIW, I think this piece gains from a structured fit in a structured fabric.

Kristin Alterations (Based on Medium):

• Removed 2 inches from shoulder-width of the original medium size. This brings the shoulder width to smaller than the XS size provided.

• Shortened vertically using the petite shorten-lines (nice addition to the pattern). Will end up lengthening the lower one in next version. That means this thing is pretty darned short if you make the petite version of view A. If you're 5'3" or taller, I recommend that you don't shorten both lines.

• Took width out of the side-seams (to between a medium and small). I expect to remove width from the centre back, in a third version, if this isn't adequate - which would take the side seams down to a full small. Note - the version I've photographed is smaller than the medium in the side seams but, after making the muslin, I went back and took some more width from the side seams .

• Altered the sleeve head to suit a) my general sloper and b) to get the sleeve to fit the armscye (which I'd substantively altered in curve and width - to narrow the shoulders). Had to do this yet again after making the muslin because the sleeve head was still too tall (half the reason I had to do muslin surgery to narrow the shoulders after the fact).

Eventually, I might even narrow the shawl collar band - it's quite wide - but I'm going to try to perfect the width through other means as I do think the band is what gives this thing its oomph.

One other thing I did - cuz I was short on fabric:

I had to cut the band at the waist and piece it together. Those bands are long and you need 4 of them? I do think it's best to work with 2 yards of 60 wide fabric for this piece, which is actually more than the pattern calls for. That NEVER happens. (Update: In retrospect, I believe this happened because I had a wonky yardage of this fabric - as I'd already cut from it once. On my next version, I used a clean, 60" wide piece and it only took 1.3 metres (1.5 yards).)  I was actually able to cut 2 pieces full-length and the other two were intended for the facing (which wouldn't show from the front). But as is my usual way, I confused inside and outside. I suspected this would happen so I aimed to make the work-around as pretty as possible with top-stitching. It's actually an interesting, if subtle, design feature and it was more relaxing than worrying about which side was up.

Now off to the new FabricLand that opened in the Honest Ed's building (till they close it and demolish it for condos next year. Fucking condos.)

Thoughts on this piece? I realize that the photos are bad, and you can't see it on, so the best you can do is talk about how it might look better in real life. But I'm intrigued to know, if you've made this, if you found it ridiculously large-fitting. But short. Did you make it using a structured fabric? Did you do the peplum version? I might actually make that one once I get the dimensions of this, truly practical, wardrobe basic down.

Good Luck

Today, I was scrolling through Twitter and came across this bit of genius from Lisa (a wise soul who knows from this kind of shit): Resilience can be built.

Gotta tell you, it resonated.

I've got about 8000 things going on that are stressing me the fuck out. The other day a friend suggested, on the basis of my latest parenting woes alone, that I should most definitely crowd-source a one way ticket to Tahiti. (I'm sure she means business-class.)

Look, if I were to enumerate my stressors, one by one, no doubt some of you would relate to me completely. Some of you, I imagine, would be horrified by the goings-on and feel sorry for me. And just as many others would look at that list and say: So? That's stupid stress. Honey, you've got it good.

One of the stranger legacies of my upbringing - and one against which I struggle against at times like these - is the ingrained fallacy of rightful good fortune. My parents, first-generation Americans, came of age in the era of the American Dream. Sure, they were saturated in the lesson that hard work would ensure success but they took it a few steps farther. To my family, good luck is a birthright. And truly, for many, many years, that claim seemed irrefutable.

Of course, if you look at things too carefully, there are micro-cracks in the veneer but, back in the day, there was always money for revarnishing. Alas, over the course of time, reality has occasionally leveled the playing-field. You know: cancer, deep grief, economic downturn.

But back to resilience. It can be built, which is another way of saying it is learned.

Every winter, Canadians relive this at a meta-level. Every year, at this time, we are confounded by the utter insanity of being alive in a place that is only artificially so. And while there are some who experience this lesson more viscerally than others, we are all in the same box. Our bodies learn how to adapt to temperatures which, two months earlier, would have been beyond our human ability to process, much less to endure.

Our bodies miraculously adjust; our minds, however, struggle on. To lose hope, in this environment, is a given. We cannot remember the charms of spring, and why? So that we can find resilience in the moment - in hardship.

When you are dragged under by the deepest ravages of winter (metaphoric or otherwise), find the stockpiles in your root cellar. Feel your adaptability. Because unlike good fortune (a fickle fairy who comes and goes on a gentle breeze), your resilience is your birthright. Own it and it will be your eternal good fortune. Or so I'm led to believe.