MoonWalk Bra

Recently I was asked to adjust the length of three bridesmaid’s dresses, and when I went to measure up and pin to the correct length, one of the bridesmaids asked if I could customise her bra for a charity walk she was doing: the MoonWalk in Edinburgh, organised by a charity called Walk the Walk – apparently the largest grant making breast cancer charity in the UK.  People taking part in this walk wear only bras on their top halves, and they decorate them in all sorts of fun ways!

I was given a beige bra, some fabric, and an inspiration picture from Pinterest (below).  Oh, and a deadline of one week!

This is the inspiration image from Pinterest – notice the complete lack of pattern matching!

I must admit that this little project turned out to be a lot trickier than I at first thought – for instance, the bra still needed to be able to stretch, so I’d need to use a triple zig zag stitch.  I bought some velvet ribbon to accessorise the bra, but realised I’d only be able to use this on the cups because it was non stretch, so I bought elastic for the back and shirring elastic for the straps.

I started by sewing a few lines of gathering stitches along the selvedge of the fabric, so that I could have a raw edge along the top that wouldn’t fray.  I distributed the gathers as evenly as I could and attached it to the top of the bra, then sewed some more gathering stitches along the bottom edge of this, positioned them to fit and pinned it all in place before sewing, tucking the raw edges under on the inside of the bra at the bottom.

The bra was underwired, so when it came to sewing the fabric down at the bottom band, I had to mostly hand sew, and at points I used my machine but operated it with the hand wheel only, to ensure the needle was going where I wanted it to go.  The machine sewing was tricky because with the foam cups, underwire, and gathered fabric, it was pretty thick and uneven!  After the fabric was stitched into place, I then hand sewed the velvet ribbon to the bottom, which helped to cover up the stitches!

Part-way through – hand sewing the velvet ribbon to the bottom to cover up the stitching.

For the straps, I cut long strips of tartan fabric with pinking shears, then sewed two lines of shirring elastic down the length to gather them up, then triple zig-zagged these strips to the straps, skipping stitching over the metal bra adjusters and loops.  I added the two bows at the base of the straps as a little finishing touch.

Finished bra!

Pretty bows

Overall, it’s not the neatest thing I’ve ever made, but I think the effect is good and it should serve its purpose!  It was certainly a fun thing to make!

On the mannequin