Prep School Bra

I recently finished a bra that reminds me of a prep school blazer.

Funny enough when I googled “prep school blazer” one popped up that was the exact blazer I had in mind when I put the colours for this bra together. I totally want to make a blazer like this sometime this year, too.

 

Yellow and navy are one of my favourite colour combinations. Others include: white and orange, hot pink and black, dusty rose and brown, grey and mauve, orange and hot pink, turquoise and hot pink, white and cerulean blue. I could go on but I will stop there. You get the idea. I have some favourite colour combinations. Apparently a lot of them…

This bra is made with a new cloned bra pattern. I used a different Elomi bra this time. When I was buying RTW bras, I was a huge Elomi fan. They fit me almost perfectly and I found their sizing reliable. This bra has a split upper cup with the top part in a sheer cup lining. It makes the bra lines really nice. I had two of these bras left in rotation: black and beige. My main issue with the Elomi bras was the boring colours my local store had available in the humungo sizes I needed. Recently, I retired my beige bra after another tear in the powernet. It was three years old and worn very frequently. I used that bra to clone. I followed my usual method with the pins. Check out the tutorial here. Here is the original bra:

I had some issues with the pattern. I guess I didn’t walk the lines of the pattern enough and had some mismatching. I’ll be sure to remedy that for the next version.

My main fabric was a dark navy lace. It looks black in most of the pictures, but is navy blue. I used sheer cup lining from Arte Crafts to line the entire bra and for the upper cup. The sheer cup lining is nylon and needs a lower heat on your iron. It can be ironed on a low heat. I forgot to change my iron settings and melted the first two pieces I sewed. Easily cut out the pieces again and turned my iron down. Oops. The navy lace was horrible to sew with. I forgot how much I hate lace like that! It has heavy threads through the flowers and shapes to make them pronounced. My machine hated them and kept tangling the thread and eating the lace. I used a bit of a longer stitch and mostly remedied the issue, but found it was still occasionally catching. A ball point needle helped. I would have thought that a sharp would be better, but the ball point was better for this lace. The sheer cup lining on the other hand was a dream to sew with and went together very well. I used the ball point needle on it too and it worked really well. No catching or tangling or eating of the fabric whatsoever. I have to say the lining is amazing. It looks and feels exactly like the lining in the upper cup of my Elomi bra. I’m very impressed. I have this in white and black and think I might be lining all my bras from now on. For the lace bra, it does give extra support, but in any bra it would be a lovely finish.

Other supplies I used are cream powernet and a blush hook/eye from Blackbird Fabrics, 3/4 strap/band elastic in white and rose gold rings/sliders from Arte Crafts and stashed yellow fold over elastic (from a shop on etsy that I can’t remember the name of and I am too lazy to look in my purchases from two years ago for…). The bows were purchased from eBay. Again too lazy to search for the seller. Both FOE and bows are easily found on those sites.

The straps and hook and eye went together a lot better. I’ve definitely stopped having trouble with those. Helps that I am being more vigilant about cleaning my machine. The switch to a zigzag stitch helps as well.

I just love the yellow details. It makes the bra perfect for me.

Let’s talk fit. The bra I cloned it from fit well but was a little bit small in the lower cup. I didn’t want to make an alteration to the pattern without trying it in this fabric. The bra fits okay, but it can definitely use more room in the lower cup to let the bridge sit against my chest.

It definitely wearable, but not perfect. I do love that split upper cup. I think it makes a nice push up effect. It will look even better with a bit more room in the lower cup and a little shaved off the upper cup in the horizontal line. The apex does need to be moved slightly, but that will be taken care of when I add more into the lower cup.

I really love this bra and can’t wait to make the blush bra with Emerald Erin’s kit copying her Parisian bra. Mine won’t have as low of a front, but there will be a gathered upper cup. The whole thing will be lined with sheer cup lining in white so this was a great test for it.

In other news, I made new curtains for our kitchen:

The material is a cerulean blue polyester. When the sun comes through this window, it makes the whole room look purple. It’s wonderful.

I also made several pairs of Barrie Briefs.

2 pairs of these:

Made with leftover merino wool jersey. These are super soft knickers!

2 pairs of these:

Same pink spandex material as the first pair but with mint lace this time.

1 pair of these:

I used the cream lace leftover from my wedding dress, a wide black lace for the band and narrow black lace for the legs.

1 pair of these:

Made with a poly spandex jersey and white lace. I also made some tights with the same material:

Unfortunately, my toes tore through them on the second wear. Sharp toes, I guess… I do trim my nails… Anyway, I am planning on mending and reinforcing the toe. I’ll tell you more about the tights another day. I plan on making some more and talking about how to make them.

This weekend I am planning on working on my Three’s a Charm jacket. Hopefully that will be done and ready for review for you next week! 🙂

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