There's nothing like procrastination to get me motivated to finish a project. Or...even start it. I have known I was dancing with
Salacious Powderbump for over 6 months, but I made my top for it just a couple hours before the show. You can do this too.
I'll walk you through it. What you need:
- Model your same size or dress form
- Bra in your size
- Pretty fabric
- Scissors
- Pins
- Sewing machine (or you could do it by hand)
- Sewing marker
1. Put the bra on the dress form, fill the cups with padding to fill them out to your size.
2. Drape the fabric over the edge of the bra so that the selvedge (hemmed edge) of the fabric lines up with the bottom of the bra.
3. Pin fabric to bra base.
4. Drape fabric around neck the way you want it to lay.
5. Pin the fabric to itself exactly how it lays, and then pin the top of the bra cups to a bunch of fabric hiding under the gathered/draped fabric (so that this pin doesn't show)
6. Pin the continuation of the neck-draped fabric to the back of the bra, so that the drape now actually provides support (since it's attached to the top of the bra cups.
7. Draw armholes where they meet up with the dress form's arm holes (with fabric-safe sewing marker)
8. Unhook the bra, and take it off the dress form. Sew all the pinned places on the sewing machine (or by hand) in the same order that you pinned them.
9. The extra fabric at the back can be pinned/sewed under the bra band, or left flowing (you'll probably want to hem it), or you can do what I did and leave cut most of it off but leave enough to wrap around the very center of the bra band so that the hooks don't show.
10. Cut the armholes out. For a finished product, you'll probably want to pin some bias tape around the edges of the arm hole and sew it down, but honestly, I left mine raw, and it's fine for the short term.
11. Embellish however you like (I used a single chandelier crystal in the center)
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| Photo by Diriki Rice |
12. Perform!
