A Positive Direction

 This morning, I sewed up the next Elegance bra. Just for me. I’m kinda done with the group for today, and I don’t have much more time to sew before the course ends.

On their webpage for the AFI Elegance, the company suggests the use of “Regular or Vertical with lowered front” underwires. Well! I was using vertical without lowered front, both sides are tall! So, I grabbed some Orange underwires (same size as Regular, and popped them into the 90C  practice bra. That did not work well at all! I switched back to the original fitting bra I’d made in size 90B and the wires fit it great, and the cups fit well on me!

At this point, I had the right wires, right cup size, and next I altered the band pattern. I always seem to need to swing up the bra band. So, I did the basic band alteration on this pattern, then cut out the bra, and sewed it up. 

Did it fit? No. But, I can see what I need to change. 

So, the underwires need to sit against the outside of the breast in a certain position. They are meant to be close to the line of the breast root and support that edge of the cup. I did not understand this on my first few bras, so I want to express the thought now. 

This regular underwire sits leaning way back in this bra. No support, drag marks everywhere in the fabric. But, if I pull the bra, really rotate it into place, then the band finally smoothed out and the cup wrinkles disappear. If I had a pair of these “Vertical Underwire With Lowered Front,” whatever these mythical unicorns are, I doubt I would have to crank the bra around as far  to fit it. But, I have the Orange wires, which will work fine once the pattern is tweaked. 

So, I pulled off half the lower band elastic and chopped the center gore in half. Next, I’ll patch some fabric into the gap - I’m spreading the gore somewhere between 1/2 to one full inch. Then, I’ll reapply that elastic and try out this fitting bra. It shouldn’t be too many more alterations before something actually fits well.