Bra Sewing - My Very First Me-Made Bra! MAYA by AFI Atelier
After MUCH anticipation, my shipment of bra making supplies finally arrived! Unfortunately, the bra pattern I ordered did not. What is one to do? Why search online for a free pattern of course!
Thus, the MAYA Bra Pattern from AFI Atelier
This free bra pattern has an amazing size range - 28AA to 44H (UK)!!
Prior to diving into my precious bra making supplies, I decided to make a muslin or bra toile to check the fit. There is an excellent trial run bra tutorial at Cloth Habit. I highly recommend it as I made not one but TWO trial run bras.
As a lingerie sewing novice, I found the instructions that accompanied the Maya bra to be sufficient. I did some more "research" while I was waiting for the supplies to arrive and felt fairly confident to just dive in. Mostly the tutorials from Make Bra to supplement the **almost** complete instructions from AFI.
Why 2 bra muslins? The first one (32F) turned out to be too big in the cups - so I went back to the AFI site and downloaded the 32E. Since I already had a teeny bit of experience sewing bra cups from the first muslin, I went ahead and made a few changes for round two. I'm fairly narrow set so I took in the center gore - at lot, lowered center gore and graded the cups to match, and widened the back band to better mirror my favorite bras.
A few key take aways:
- Double up on the lightweight powermesh (likely unnecessary if using regular powermesh)
- shorten band further as it fits like a 34
- slightly too much immediate projection at the wire
- Shorten underwire as the shortening the center gore also shortened the wire channeling.
Overall, pretty comfy! Cups fit pretty well - center gore tacks and doesn't jab me in the chest. This creates more of a "natural" silhouette. I may make another one - but wireless to use as a sleep bra!