Experiments in Woven Bras, Part 2: The Front-laced Specimen

This is a very belated continuation of my first post of this "series". At this point, the front-laced specimen is already worn out and torn out of use, and has been for several years.

It ended up not fitting perfectly - that's the danger of using a well-used old bedsheet with quite a bit of give in it for fitting a muslin of a closely-fitting garment, I think! I completely forgot about that. So if you venture on this sort of journey yourself, use new fabric for your muslins, not old bedsheets? They're fine for more loosely fitting garments, which is why it did not hit me.

 

Also my figure has changed again. My six centimetres in the bust are back. Frankly I quite liked my sewing D cup, I was used to it, so I'm quite happy to have my six centimetres back. :D

(It's actually also in part to do with the undergarment I'm wearing when taking my measurements, as I found out by putting on an old swim top experimentally. That one got me back down to roughly the minus six measurement, but obviously with a different silhouette. Don't underestimate your undergarments.)

Still, this wearable muslin successfully got me through the summer of 2021 and served as a very good jumping point to finally get it right, figuring out what worked and what didn't. The pluses and minuses.

Minus: One of the major things that didn't work was the fit.

One, I accidentally made it too small in the (front) underbust (totally the fault of overfitting in a fabric with too much give), which is of course where it eventually tore.

Two, the princess seams sat too far out towards the back rather than going over my apex (again, I suspect, the result of overfitting in a fabric with more give).

Three, I put the curved seams on both sides of the princess seam which makes for a bust shape that's rather... Regency. :D (Pointing out to the sides, I mean.) Potentially useful discovery in reference to Regency/1820s stays with princess seams*, but not really a look you want to be sporting in your everyday 21st century life!

* (Modern princess seams usually have the centre piece cut fairly straight and the side pieces accommodating the bust curves, a close look at the famous Musée Galliera short stays shows me it's the other way round around the year 1820.)

As mentioned in Part 1, this is actually the adjusted pattern that led to specimens 2 & 3. But it illustrates the point.

Four, the back turned out to need a bit of taking in at bottom centre in order to really sit flush against my body (and provide even better support). I think that was, in this case, because I stand up much straighter when my bust is properly supported than I did when I created the original pattern (while probably wearing a rather badly fitting bra). However, I also ended up having to take the back in in my experimental Regency wrap bra and in a more recent bra created from a basic block from FreeSewing.org; so I think this particular detail may also have something to do with my recent suspicion/discovery that I have a comparatively narrow back compared to my front and my overall measurements. Not in terms of the over-the-shoulder-blades measurement that's usually considered "a narrow back", I think mine's kind of average for my overall size if not even a bit bigger (I think I do have a bit of a round back going on). But right underneath that point, at the bust / underbust level. Which is precisely what leads to these close-fitting garments having to be taken in at the back - I need to take a wedge out of the bottom hem for proper support.

Plus: Which brings me to a thing that did work in this first bra instance - it did support me. Zero bounce. It kind of flattened my bust, probably sort of in the early 20th century style that this ended up being, and it worked. At least until the whole thing started shrinking and then falling apart... (Or was that due to my bust measurement reduction being only a temporary fluke?)

Minus: Which brings me to another thing that didn't quite work - when I say zero bounce, I mean zero. Zero give. A bit of elastic does come in handy. It's telling that even many Edwardian brassieres did have elastic in the sides...

 

Aertex bust bodice, c. 1900s, the Underpinnings Museum, ID: UM-2017-001 Photo by Tigz Rice.

For the sort of physical activity I got up to at work (quite a bit of raising arms to reach above my head, actually), a bit of elastic around the straps turns out to be something useful. Not fully elasticated straps like in modern bras, those are annoying... Elasticated sides turn out to be something from the past we should not have done away with!

So yes, those are features I worked into the next step in the evolution of my woven bras.

 

Plus: What I did quite like about this specimen was the front closure. It didn't work perfectly because I had a fairly short string to lace it (working from stash here, folks), so putting it on was still a bit annoying, and the lacing isn't ideal for wearing under fitted tees. But a front closure really is very nice in terms of not having to fiddle with things blindly while contorting your arms behind your back! Even though by now I'm used to that action and did end up making bras with back closures as my default, I think I also want to try my hand at front-closing ones - both simply because it's a nice alternative, and because, well, accessibility: I think exploring that process could help other people.

Neither quite plus nor minus: I decided that on all future brass I would make the "band" part - the underbust part - a bit deeper/taller so that it grips the underbust better and provides a better "counterweight" to the bust. It wasn't a problem per se, but it is even nicer to wear that way, especially because in these unstructured bras the bust tends to slide down a bit when it's not so flattened. This, I suspect, is an experience anyone with a bust bigger than a C cup is familiar with.

 

The construction process for woven bras like this is pretty simple: sew the seams, cover the seams with tape (bias for the curves), finish the edges by taping, attach straps. The elasticated panels I started making in later instalments add a complication, but it's still essentially the same.

In this one, I inserted cords into the folded hem at centre front for added strength, and then added handworked eyelets for lacing. The straps, which in this case were just pieces of plainweave tape, I attached with flat-felled seams for a neat and sturdy finish. On principle, as a simple woven bra from a quilting cotton-type fabric, this construction works very well. Everything else I built on top of this basis from now on is just a variation on the theme.

My right strap, in the front, is another place where it started tearing, which I think I can confidently link to all the arm-raising and lack of elasticity.

Further observation: As I suspected, strengthening the centre front in some way and potentially adding more shaping to it also does seem to be rather crucial if you don't want to end up with a monoboob. It's not an accident that Regency stays and Victorian corsets had busks or at least boning down the centre front!

This also happened to be a HSM entry back in 2021, so here's a very belated blog listing for it:

The Challenge: HSM 2021 #3: Small Is Beautiful

What the item is: An experimental 1st part of the 20th century bra.
How it fits the challenge: It's not a big item. And it's a pretty necessary part of the whole outfit looking beautiful...
Material: white cotton plainweave
Pattern: my own; the back was hacked from the pattern of my sleeveless spencer, the front is the result of a lot of measuring + muslin fitting
Year: 1910s-1930s.
Notions: cotton bias binding, cotton twill tape (I suspect a blend, actually), cotton plainweave tape, cotton thread that's two 2-ply S twist Z-plied (Hagal), cotton thread that's 3-ply Z-twist (Amann) because the previous turned out not to agree with my sewing machine so I've relegated it to handsewing duty, beeswax for waxing said handsewing thread, twisted cotton cord for cording and lacing (for now, I may change it up eventually)
How historically accurate is it? Meh. It turned out to be a sort of wearable muslin that's all and nothing and not entirely correct for any decade (the whole lacing with cording part takes its cues from even earlier garments, I suspect). But I tested out the pattern (needs tweaking but works very nicely) and the theory of vintage bra construction I've derived from looking at lots of photos of originals on auction sites (because those are usually nice and show details of the insides), and I think I'm definitely headed in the right direction here for being able to make 1930s-style bras for both modern and vintage wear, and hopefully also an even more correct 1910s-style princess-seamed bra.
Hours to complete: Not sure. It took several days, not of full sewing, in part because my machine was acting up (which thankfully turned out to be a thread problem)
First worn: ... not sure which day exactly it was, I've now been wearing it for about two weeks. (June 26 2021)
Total cost: Cost of materials lost to the mist of time. But it would not be much. 

 

Next up: Another dead end. The first elasticated attempt which with all the adjustments for that it took waaaay longer to make than it should have and remains unfinished and abandoned in favour of simpler, better fitted, more sturdy specimens. I made it in a fabric that was too flimsy. Woven bras are one garment type that quilting-type cotton is perfect for! And I planned the placement of the elastic in the elasticated section wrong, so it did not have the necessary grip in that area.

I'm going to document that attempt even when it failed, because it's still a good demonstration of the principles of woven bras that I discovered along the way. As the Czech saying goes, mistakes are how you learn.

Why I have not made the Bernhardt stays (yet). Also, J.S. Bernhardt is awesome and it is not stressed enough.

It's not for lack of trying. (Well, to a degree it is, but that has more to do with the past three years plus having been... A Thing.)

I wanted to make a variation on Fig. F - I did mention that some time ago.

 

But I just couldn't make the scaled pattern work for me. The operative words being "for me". They're great designs that clearly do the job and they explained a whole load of things to me - J.S. Bernhardt left an amazing legacy for people interested in Regency costuming (here's the original scan). But his gridded scaling method leaves a few things to be desired.

Funnily enough, the answer as to why does, I think, lay directly in Bernhardt's text.

"Such a body (i.e. "well-grown") has to have... the thickness and length proportional." (p. 43; 47 in the scan)

That, dear readers, is where it falls apart for me.

Not only is my torso proportionally longer, it turns out my back is probably comparatively narrower than my front. With Bernhardt's "measure the back and derive a square grid from it" scaling method, I ended up with a pattern that was a whopping 8 cm too short for me.

Trying to alter an essentially conical-shaped pattern by that amount of length is... frustrating.

I had to figure out where to do it, first. And I realised it needed to be done at both bust and above-waist level.

I might have been able to make it work, don't get me wrong. I got started. I just have too many other things to do, so it never got finished. At one point I managed to align my cutting lines wrong on my additional strip of paper, and there were too many curves to be trued over a pretty large distance and, well, there is such a thing as "more trouble than it's worth".

The good news?

Bernhardt may have provided us with a neat gridded sizing method, but it isn't the only thing he provided us with. He also shows how you can take a basic conical block and turn it into his stays designs.

So what I'm actually going to do is make a basic conical block for myself, and turn it into his stays design.

It turns out that drafting a basic block and messing about on paper is actually a perfectly historically accurate way to design Regency women's clothes.

Oh, by the way?

The book doesn't just feature stays patterns. J.S. Bernhardt is AWESOME.

(I've already cleared this image up because LOOK AT THAT MOTHERLOAD OF REGENCY AWESOMENESS.)

 

SLEEEEVES

 

ANOTHER SLEEVE! SKIRTS!

(Oh, and there's Part 2. With adjustments for posture, men's blocks, and stockings.)

I still need to properly read his text and see if he left any other pointers. Reading German in fraktur isn't the easiest thing for me to do; I can figure it out (with the help of online dictionaries), but it's slow going that tires me out quickly. So far I've learnt that I should start at centre front and draw the curves as they are on the body, according to sight, which... isn't particularly helpful.

(I mean, I do understand to a degree. I have successfully drafted a basic block for my grandma, long distance, applying the time-honoured method of eyeballing to some of the curves. The problem is that it's much easier to do that with the curve of a rounded back, which you can see clearly in a side view of the person, than it is to do it with the curve of a pattern piece wrapping around the body horizontally.)

No matter:

There's the arc method described in Patterns of Fashion 5, which right away takes into account torso length and different measurements for front and back. Which, phew.

There's Mariah Pattie's method.

I tried combining the two in 1:5 scale, and it seems theory does translate into practice thus far. I used two different radiuses for front and back. (Ignore the messy lines and unclear style, this is just doodling to see if theory translates into practice, and the 1:5 scale kind of messed with my numbers here and there.)

And then there's the... phenomenon... I came across when drafting my sister's folk costume bodice using a variation on Bilikis' (Nigerian) bodice drafting method.

I suspect my final method will be some sort of amalgam. I have an idea how I could combine the arc method and the... phenomenon... for an easy creation of curves.

Bilikis' method of aplying various lines for various vertical points on the body and differentiating underarm and full bust/chest definitely was another of the missing links that made me go "oh, of course!" I think basically the winning combination is doing that but on a curve.

(Mariah Pattie's method looks great and simple, but I have my suspicions regarding possibly too unrealistically large radiuses for some people. Generally, it doesn't look particularly friendly to small sewing spaces; until recently, I didn't have a good large drafting / cutting table myself. Also, in her basic method she has the same curve for front and back, and that's not what I'm seeing in Bernhardt's draft. But if it works for you, more power to you!)

It's funny, because this burst of Regency inspiration actually came about from my pondering of 1780s stays and possible local folk costume variations thereof. It turns out the local harvest festival in September (more or less a harvest festival) references the elevation of my current hometown to town status in 1788. Which gives me the perfect excuse to finally make the jacket-and-petticoat ensemble I've been dreaming of since 2015 (although it won't be happening in such fancy fabrics). No promises as to when - I have bad track record in that regard - but it's definitely going to happen. I have a printed cotton with personal significance that is waiting to become some variation on the Amalia jacket. I hope I can get a collar out of it, too.

#CoBloWriMo 21: UFOs

That is, for those unfamiliar with this online sewing jargon, UnFinished Objects.

I have a lot of those. Some aren't here with me.

Some are. So here's a selection of my unfinished object, to take a stock of the making before it's done, fingers crossed.

Or not. The purplish "modern" spencer never got finished.

It's all the fault of my enthusiastic unresearched patternmaking; I'm now too bothered by the fact I put the deep-inset armscye in the front as well as the back.

Not good for the period, and bothering me in this modern-constructed garment as well.

It's a pretty good fit, though (although it could no longer fit with a button overlap), so it's a bit of a mock-up. A starting point.

* * *

In further bathroom photo adventures: Mock-up Nr. 2 of the Utrecht wrap stays.

Way better than mock-up Nr. 1, which I'm soooo not going to show you, because it didn't fit at all. That was how I found out that only one bust gusset for a DD cup was a bad idea. That volume needs to be distributed more evenly, without all the strain being focused on one point. And it plays havoc on grainlines, so I ended up with a lot of wrinkling and buckling etc.

It's still not completely good. I'm thinking of slanting the inside gussets, or moving them closer to centre front, because there's still some odd wrinkling happening there that I think could be taken care of with a change of grainlines. And I think I need to play with the slant / attachment of the side-front and straps, too, because there's fabric excess there.

Also wondering now if I should try cutting the front on the bias, like in the Bernhardt diagrams. Namely, the diagram C - the basic shape is very similar to it, after all. Maybe that would take care of the problems I'm having, too; so I might start with that.

* * *

Also in the realm of underwear, conical stays teetering somewhere on the edge between late 1780s/1790s, and a folk costume bodice (Central Bohemia, specifically).

I am more and more drawn to earlier transitional styles, so I sort of set out to experiment with it from inside out, cheating by machine of the inside layers. Considering how long it took me to finish my Regency stays, by the time I'm finished with these, I might even really be ready to move into the era!

The fabric I'm covering it with is probably more late 17th than late 18th century, I'm afraid. Let's pretend it's a re-use.

* * *

Also in-progress: a shortgown.

I didn't get beyond sewing two rectangular pieces together to create the skirt portion, and pleating the cetre back. Which, in retrospect, was probably a wrong order of things?

It's a quilting cotton that's not-entirely-correct-but-good-enough.

I've found an extant original that's a good example of what I have in mind, so I have something more solid to go on now. Although now I look more closely at it, I realise the skirt is cut together with the bodice. So it won't be entirely the same anyway. :P

* * *

This cutting layout is actually something I'm already wearing. I think the skirt in question needs to have its pocket openings taped, though, something I forgot to do...

Note: that's not flowered fabric, that's flowered tissue paper. Something was wrapped in it once, I think. Now it's become a pattern. A 1915 pattern (although adapted for my modern uses, with the introduction of side seams.)

* * *

Also in the works: another pair of Moravian-Wallachian socks, this time actually in wool.

(That's an old photo. I'm further ahead now.)

* * *

There are more things in progress. Too many. And more ideas of what to make. Still, I think it's overall a lot better than this time last year, with things I have actually finished (though not yet posted about), with a lot of the ideas with much more concrete outlines, and with some concrete ideas for some fabrics that had been lingering in the stash for years.