About the importance of reading your comments before you publish them ....

So I admit it: I am stupid ... and lazy! I am following a  sew along. It's very graciously hosted by Anna at A Few Threads Loose. There had been a longish gap and I wanted to ask when it would continue. So I wrote a comment in no ill intend and sent it without reading it first. Right now I could actually slap myself for that. My comment was this

 "I know you're very busy with affordable manicures and such, but when does the sew along continue?"


Argh! I'm not the most horrible person in the world. I simply forgot the god-damned smiley. If I where Anna I wouldn't even have kept posting. She had mentioned that she really wanted to get a manicure on her trip (and who wouldn't). So I figured I might be able to start making up for it by taking some work of her hands. Do you think it's any good?


Okay so I know I'm not going to be able to write a sewalong as well as she does. Instead I'm going to write about something that she luckily doesn't have to worry about: LBAs. Anna's method just added inches horizontally. Like the Facebook user I didn't get enough coverage. I was actually afraid things would pop out. Now the Facebook person was much smarter than me: She just scaled the pattern up! So here's a tutorial about how to do that.

Draft of the bra cup pattern. The red lines are those used
to find the BP (bust point).

First you have to find the bust point For this I connected the lower edge of the upper dart and the lower edge of the middle dart along the bottom. And I drew a line that halves the angle on the CF corner. The intersection is where the BP is.


Then you measure the distance from BP to the lower edge along the red line. I came out with 8.75 cm. Anyone have something different? Then measure the distance from your BP (the nipple) to your under bust (where the under wire would lie). From that you can calculate the percentage you need to scale up or down by.


SCALE="BP to UB on you" *100
      "BP-UB on the pattern"


You then just print your PDF-Pattern that much bigger. Be careful about the notches as they will be in a different place now. Measure along the lower edge of the bra cup (darts folded) to determine the distance from CF to notch and mark the new distance on the braa band.


 I haven't made a full bra like this yet, but I have cut a muslin and basted everything together and that fit just perfectly.


You can of course use this method to make any bra cup fit you.  Just find the bust point, measure and scale. This also works for making a bra cup smaller.