help with bra band alteration, please

Have you looked on the wall of notions at your fabric store at the different size bra hooks/closures? You might take your bra into the shop and check to see which closure is best for you. $60? and I thought $22 was a lot for a

How about doing the band reduction under the arms? You might try it almost like a dart (narrowest part at the armhole, widest part at the bottom) so that it doesn't narrow the arm opening but it will bring in the excess band.

Try $85 for a bra size that I won't mention in public because it is so extreme.

I'll tell ya, Sharon, it just isn't that hard to make a bra from scratch, unless you are trying to do something complicated. I agree with the people who say to take it in under the arms, but the problem with that is that it puts your strap ends too far apart in the back if you make too much of a difference. If it's only a half-inch tuck at each size, that should be okay, though, and it won't be very noticeable, either.

But if you don't wear an underwire or one of those molded-cup bras, I'd really encourage you to try to make your own if you have the time and an intermediate sewing skill. It may take three or four tries before you have it perfected, but then guess what? You have a perfect bra pattern for a fraction of what it costs to buy new and can make TONS and not have to worry about finding the right size.

If you want a good starting point, Kwik-Sew has a bra that goes up to a DD cup.

I sent one of my bras to Lee-Anne Burgess in Australia and had a pattern cloned from a partly-shredded bra (pesky lace cups that don't hold up grumble grumble) when I was too lazy to re-draft the pattern I made years back and had lost. It costs $20-30 and comes with construction instructions, fabric suggestions, etc. Well worth the price. I think there's someone in Canada who does that, too -- bramakers.com, maybe?

MELINDAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!

Will you please let me know how to contact this lady??

We used to have a local bra-teaching lady and I kept promising myself I'd go and learn from her. I never managed to get the time to coincide with the availability of funds, though. Now, she's gone!

I'd love to be able to make my own bras, but am far too scared of wasting huge dollars in my early efforts. The notion of a custom pattern fills me with hope, though!

TIA,

Certainly:

Phone: 61 2 69223867 Fax: 61 2 69224626

e-mail: snipped-for-privacy@bigpond.com

Thanks very much Melinda! ;-D Just what I need! ;-D

(Hope it works...) =:-0

I appreciate everyone's help and advice. I figured that sooner or later I would have to start sewing my own bras from scratch, but since I do need an underwire, I was hoping for an easier solution. I think that I'm going to try the reverse dart on the underarm part of the band, but I've also gotten a copy of the article from Threads on bra cloning, so maybe I'll give it a try with some not too expensive material.

Sharon, I make my own with underwires and it's really not hard to do. I bought Leeane Burgess' book years ago and followed her instructions - if you have a bra that fits, take it apart and use as a pattern.

good luck

chris :-)

Hmm. The Threads article mentions making front-hook bras. Would your adjustments to the bra band be easier if your first scratch bra was a front-hook?