Bullet Bra Day 3

So I’m a little bit behind in posting this but here is where I am at with the bullet bra so far.  I just have to say, if you are intimidated with trying to sew a bra, don’t be!  This pattern is super easy and flexible.  If you make a “mistake” it is pretty easy to work around as you will see from this post.

The assignment for day three was to attach the front and back bands to the cups.  Pretty simple, not an overwhelming number of steps.  The first thing I had to do, before I could attach the bands, was to determine how I was going to cover/finish my center front seam.  I didn’t really want to serge the edges since the inside of the cups were so nicely finished with the French seams.  I opted instead to make a trim piece out of some scraps of satin I had from another project.

Center front seam trim

I am just showing it loosely tacked in place here.  Once I get a little further in the construction and finishing I will hand sew this trim down.

After I tacked my trim in place I sewed together my front band pieces as described in Va-Voom Vintage’s instructions.  I did add a couple more simple steps that make for a little bit neater and quicker finish.  After joining the two front bands together on the bottom edge I finger pressed that seam allowance to one side and stitched it down (understitching).  On that same side (which will become the inside of the bra) I did a quick 1/4″ basting stitch around the edge.  I was then able to use that basting stitch to quickly and accurately press that 1/4″ edge over to make hand stitching the inside of the bra go quicker at the end.  It is much easier to do this extra step early on than fiddling with trying to get a nice, evenly turned under edge later when the whole bra is almost together.

Understitching and basting line

Now I was ready to attach the front band to my cups.  I attached the front band that I did NOT baste the edge of.

Attaching Front Band

You can see my neatly pressed edge here.  I hope that steps is making sense.  It literally takes seconds to press a nice even edge like that when you have the basting stitches to guide your edge.  You can take the time to pull the stitching out if you want but on something like this you don’t need to because everything will be on the inside of the garment and won’t be seen anyway.

Next was the attachment of the back bands.  This is where I discovered two discrepancies.  I am not sure how they came to be because the mock up worked out with no problems.

Problems

Somehow my front band ended up being too long and my back band ended up being too short on the side seam?!?!  I have no idea what I did or how I did it, but I was committed to making this work.  I don’t think either issue will end up effecting the fit so creative problem solving was my answer.  The front band was easy, I just trimmed off the excess.  I had already finished the bottom edge of my back band and I wasn’t about to cut new pieces or take out stitching so I opted for this adjustment instead.

Added color band for problem solving

Problem solving

This is what we have at the end of day 3.

Bow or no bow?

Those things look dangerous!