Tuesday, March 15, 2011

The Beach Bra Sewing Pattern

Ooooh boy do I have something cool to show you! I paid a fortune to get my hands on this little pattern and it was totally worth it. Readers, may I introduce you to the other love of my life, the beach bra pattern:
This little lovely bit of 1950's heaven came from a supplement, instead of an actual pattern. It was a breeze to make up and only took me about 4 hours.

I have all sorts of plans for this little baby including adding a skirt to make a dress out of it, sewing it with a contrast collar, and hopefully finding another vintage pattern to make matching bathing suit bottoms as well. The options are endless.
And I just couldn't keep it to myself. So I made it into a PDF (8 hours of hell on earth working with photoshop: not in my repertoire of talents) and it's for sale in my etsy shop. All proceeds will go towards the purchase of an excellent wig to replace all the hair I pulled out whilst trying to make a multi-page pdf.
All that aside, I'm really happy with how this little gem turned out:
The pattern has 3 very well placed darts that actually didn't pucker when placed over my meager bosom (darts always pucker on me).
This makes me want to go swimming, and also makes me sad that I live in a country where summer is all of five minutes long.


Here's a little peak at the layout. Instead of pinning everything twice, I just traced copies of my pattern pieces so I could pin and cut them all at once.

For the long pattern piece that you draft per the pattern instructions, I just made two and taped them together, as opposed to more complicated cutting instructions.
The collar looks more complicated than it is, and the pattern came with great illustrations drawn right on the pattern pieces to help you puzzle out placement.
Naturally, it doesn't fit my dress form as well as it fits me, because Slut Jane II has bigger boobs than me.
I will be making this again, and again, and again.............

10 comments:

  1. This would be a great fit for my meager bosom as well :) The top looks great on you and I hope you get to wear it for more than 5 minutes this summer. Great post.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Annabelle, Ange, thank you both for your sweet comments!

    ReplyDelete
  3. learn to iron! darts look horrible otherwise..

    ReplyDelete
  4. Whipped this lovely pattern together as soon as I got. Amazing...you were totally right in that it fits just perfect on smaller busted ladies. I love...gonna go make some more now. Bye.
    <3 Reagan at lilvintagehomemaker.blogspot.com

    ReplyDelete
  5. @Reagan
    Reagan that's awesome! I'd love to see pictures!

    ReplyDelete
  6. Well I realize I am a whole year behind, but if never found bottoms to go with it, there's a free swimsuit on burdastyle.com you can download. Can't remember what it's called, but it's the only free one piece there. You can use that, then cut right above the waist and have a high-waisted boy-shorts style bottom piece to go with it! Definietely loving this top, though.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Any chance of doing a You Tube tutorial showing you putting together and sewing up the top....?

    ReplyDelete
  8. I'm 38 D, and I cut the pieces for 40" bust. I roughly fitted the pieces on myself and found them too small. I had to print again and extend the margins as if for a 42". I altered the pattern slightly from a button back to a tapering sash for tying. I made it in a blue striped muslin and it looks very good. However, this pattern would be much better suited for someone with a B or C cup. When I printed the pattern, the title page had a printing glitch, and the two pages with the bodice sections had a glitch (not visible before printing)-- a rectangular section missing from the middle and printed so that the missing part was on another part of the page in miniature. This happened with two different printers. There was enough print in the right spots to pencil in the missing lines and info.

    ReplyDelete