Wide Roots: Karolina

In my bra adventure, thus far I’ve discovered that I cannot just take a bra off the shelf and wear it, so I cannot easily just clone one, and I haven’t found a pattern that I can use as is.

Shape wise, my breasts are wide. I could probably attribute this to breastfeeding, which I was blessed to be able to do for about two years per baby. But, truth be told, I was active when young and just didn’t have much there until pregnancy! Also, because of the years of stretching around mammary tissue, they’ve gotten a bit bottom heavy. At this point, I’m sure these breasts deserve the dignity of a comfortable bra.

What type of bra really helps best? A full cup would need lots of built in support to push them up into the top of the cup. If I use horizontal seams, they look kind of sad... Vertical seams are said to be used for extra support. I suppose this leads to Demi or Balconette style bras with plenty of seams.

I can try the Shelley again, but I’m not ready for that. It will take some changes.
Harriet was pretty close, maybe make the lace edge narrower (shorter top to bottom) or wider (side to side)?

With a little searching, I found a cute pattern called Margo in a shop on Etsy, called LovelyOwnBra. I haven’t purchased any bra foam yet, which is what Margo calls for, but there’s a similar bra pattern that calls for lace. It’s named Karolina, and it costs half as much as Harriet, just over a third of the price of Shelley. Printing the cradle pieces at 100% shows an issue with my needed wire size:

Karolina has a four piece cup, all vertical seams, and is designed for a 70 cm or 80 cm band, I’m just an inch or two larger, so I converted to inches and figured out the difference, then used the printer to increase the pieces (printed at 109%). Also, note that there are no seam allowances included; one has to add one’s own. Not an issue, plus it helps that I can easily tape together the cup pieces and have a guesstimate on fitting.

 

I taped the cup pieces together, and the hubs said it needed more width to cover me, so I cut down into the last triangular piece and widened it. I also tried adding a join for the strap, but it turned out to be too far back on me. I need that to be in the third section instead of the fourth. Also, between the second and third sections is the main seam that is supposed to go over the peak. This needs to be brought in towards the front a quarter inch or so to fit me properly. I felt it was too generous (pointy), too, so I decreased the curve there.

I don’t have the right type of lace, or cup stabilizer, so I made my trial bra from duoplex. It could be the fabric’s extra stretch that gives me about an extra quarter inch on the left and half inch on the right side. If I had made the cups from nonstretch fabric, I think it would have been really close! I can certainly straighten the seams a bit between the third and fourth cup pieces to help cent er me a bit more.

With the increase in size, the cradle was a better size for the wire (shown above are both the 44 and 46 in the enlarged cradle pattern, I could curve out the top right a bit more to match). The size 46 wire was just a bit too wide on the right (my smaller side). I put the 44 in and am happier.

I need to figure a better way to show these. I’m using the safety pins to hold the straps on for this trial run, but the bra does look pretty good on!