You can also use the cups in a range of "cradles" - midi bras, long line bras, basques ("Merry Widow"), "Torselets" (right), corselets, panty corselets, and obviously lace up corsets, but before we go on to "body shapers" we will stay with bra design.

One of my designs for a "Torselet" - a "pull on" (ie no back fastening) torso shaper. The underpants on the mannequin are separate from the Torselet.

When designing and making bras or other garments, you are dealing with three-dimensional articles, and bras have backs as well as fronts. When you do any design sketches, draw the back of the garment as well as the front. You will have to do this when you draw the "Flats" (technical drawings of the garments for manufacture) for your collections.

So I will go through the common bra back styles, or you can think outside the box and come up with your own.

Leotard

The Leotard is the back style you drafted for the darted cup bra. It's good for larger sizes as the "strap platform" strap anchor point is spread along part of the wing.

Camisole

 Light and young-looking, it can have convertible straps. But the pull of the straps can distort the wings as the load is not spread out along part of the hem of the wings.

Gated

 Part of the wings are removed and short lengths of strap elastic form the hook and eye platforms. Popular on some well known "push up" plunge styles of bra, but this style needs short bones at the ends of the wings to keep the wing fabric spread out.

"T" or "Racer" back. Used for sports bras as it stops the shoulder straps slipping off. The fastening for this type of back must be moved to the front, or alternatively the bra can be pulled on. Pulling on is not really a good design option for a sports bra as they are designed to be tight fitting and supportive for sports, keeping your breasts in place at all costs.

Strapless. In the short bra form, the weight of the bust is totally supported by the tension (pull) of the wings. In a long line strapless bra or basque, as well the tension of the wings, boning helps to support the bust and transmit the load towards the waistline. I think a long line strapless bra or basque for eveningwear is so elegant and stylish (I love the look of 1950s underwear).

Backless. "Backless" strapless bras do not work because there is insufficient "spring" pull on the underwires from the wings to hold the underwires into the "breast roots" and support the cups / breasts. How many times have you seen someone in a low backed strapless evening top spend most of the evening pulling the top (and underwear) back up into place?

The only way to get a backless bra to (just about) work is to use a lot of boning to push the cups up into place and silicon rubber "gripper" bands (as in hold-up stockings) to try to hold everything in, but if you use talcum powder or perspire a lot then the silicon rubber will slip down. It's hot on the red carpets, but it's not an ideal solution.

Restyling the Darted Cup

"There's an art to a dart" Design Your Own Dress Patterns by Adele P. Margolis.

If you have ever done any outer garment pattern modification you will know that you can move a dart around its "origin point" or divide a dart up to create different styles.

We must "maintain the fullness" of the cup. If the darted bra cups hold the volume of your breasts, then we must keep that cup volume when we restyle them.

Style 1: Horizontal "over bust" seam cup

The problem with the darted bra cup is that it can still be "pointy" even after sewing out of the dart (see part three on sewing the darted cup bra together). By dividing the single dart in to two or more darts we can smooth out this point.

2.  This next step is dependent on your chosen underwire length (cup to cradle seam length). We will be using lines 3 and 6 on the cup block as the new dart lines, but when you measured cup to cradle seam length and transferred the measurement to the cup pattern, line 3 may have ended up going through the redrawn neck hemline.

If this is the case with your cup pattern, you will have to swing line 3 down so that it passes through the cup to cradle seam again.

Swing line 3 down about 10mm from the neck hem / cradle seam corner.

3.  Now cut out the cup and cut along lines 6 & 3 to give you three cup parts.

4.  Place the lower half cup parts on a new sheet of paper so that lines 4 & 5 are on top of one another.

You have now closed up the original dart and automatically opened up two new darts (lines 6 & 3) of the right size.

Draw around the parts. Also draw around the top half of the cup onto a new sheet of paper.

5.  Remember the golden rule about maintaining the fullness of the cup. You will see that the original dart had curves to its legs (some fullness).

We must now transfer this small amount of material to the new darts / over bust seam.

We will not measure this area, but instead try to "judge by eye". Use your Flexy curve / French curves to draw smooth curves along the new top to bottom cup over bust seam lines.

6.  The new over bust seam lines must be the same length.

After drawing the curves, measure each line with your flexible rule and, if need be, adjust the curves.

7.  When you have checked the seam lines, copy the two cup parts onto a new sheet of paper and cut them out. Stick the paper cup together and have a good look at it from all angles for shape.

I always do paper "mock ups" of bra cups to see if they have a nice shape before cutting up fabric. I also sometimes do the same thing with a new corset pattern draft to double-check seam lengths and to look for any odd curves / shape. (I get through a lot of paper and sticky tape. One day I will have to invest in some 2D-to-3D software and help save the world's trees!)

8.  Now all that is left is to add a seam allowance of 5mm, and you are ready to cut & sew.

A shape problem that can happen with the horizontal over bust seam two-part cup is that it can have a "toolshed roof" shape in profile (viewed from the side of the cup).

This is because the lower half of the cup has lost its roundness when the single curved dart was removed (although the "flattening" of the lower half of the cup can give some "push up" to the smaller bust).

To get a more rounded shape to the cup, we can divide the two-part cup into three parts and recurve the two lower half parts seam.

Style 2: Three part cup

Do as above, up to step 3. Instead of putting the two lower cup parts together along lines 4 & 5, put the parts together just at the top of the dart and gently curve lines 3 & 6.

One thing that we have not looked at yet is the "cup apex", ie the point on the cup where the shoulder strap joins the cup.

This is not a fixed point on the cup pattern, but you can move it around for different styling options. It all depends on what sort of décolletage you want for your bra.

You can lower the cup apex / neckline hems for a more "open" style or raise the cup apex to give more coverage and prevent "double bust" syndrome (part of the breasts are pushed out of the cups and hang over).

You can also run the neck and underarm hems into an extended strip of fabric to widen the strap area for comfort.

You may even want to remove it altogether and have demi (half) cups or strapless cups.

Style 3: Strapless

Now you will need to go shopping for more underwires. The three cup styles we have drafted so far can be used with a "medium depth" daywear underwire but for demi and strapless cups you will need much deeper underwires (you can also use deeper strapless underwires with full cups if you need more support / coverage).

Obviously you will need to redraft your cradle pattern for the new, deeper underwire. See part two of this series for instructions.

There is an important change to the cradle drafting if you are planning to use a stretch fabric (Powernet) for part of the cradle. You do not need to "spring open" the underwire. For all non-stretch fabric cradles, spring open your underwire and draw the curve.

For strapless you can either use your horizontal over bust seam two-part cup block or the three-part, more rounded cup block.

First you need to draft a new cradle pattern using your new, deeper underwires (see part two for full instructions). When you have drafted the cradle you will know the length of the under bust seam on the cup.

When drafting the pattern parts for the foam inner cups, do not add seam allowance where you will be sewing a foam part to another foam part.

When you come to sew the foam inner cup parts together, use a 3 to 4mm wide zigzag stitch across the parts to form the seam. This will give you a flat (comfortable) seam.

Butt the foam parts up against one another and zigzag stitch across the join. Try to feed the parts into the sewing machine without stretching them.

After sewing the foam cup together, bind the neckline hem with 12mm (unfolded) binding tape.

Here is the foam inner cup with bound neckline hem, ready to sew to the rest of the bra cup. Sew the foam inner cups to the outer cups before sewing the cups to the cradle.

For this basque (Merry Widow) I used a light duchess satin for the outer parts of the cups and foam for the inner support, then quilted the satin and foam together using metallic thread for the needle thread and standard polyester thread for the bobbin thread (inside the cups).

When using metallic threads, use a special metallic thread needle in the sewing machine and sew slowly.

Boning in Cups

You can also put small plastic bones in strapless bra cups to help with shape and support, particularly for the larger bust.

Take the three-part strapless cup block (without seam allowance).

Using your flexible ruler, measure halfway along the bottom panel's top edges and transfer this measurement to the top cup panel's bottom edge. Then put the panels together at the measurement marks. Mark a centre line on the top panel, as in the diagram. Mark bone case start and end points, as in the diagram.

The measurements for these marks are not critical, so use your judgement, but the straight line of the bone casing must pass as close as possible through the points where the top and bottom cup panels touch.

Now draw a straight line from the cup bottom panel mark to the cup top panel mark.

Draw a parallel line next to the first line, equal to the width of your chosen bone casing.

Add a 5mm seam allowance to the cup parts, cut out and sew the fabric cups together. Then stitch bone casings to the inside of the cups following the casing lines transferred from the patterns to the fabric (you can use a tracing wheel and fabric carbon paper).

You can use underwire casing for the bone casing or you can use bias binding tape for lighter casing. Remember to put the bones in the casing before hemming the cups.

As well as foam and boning in the cups, it's a good idea to put boning on the cradle to wing seams instead of just covering the seams with seam tape. Again, you can use plush underwire casing for the plastic or spiral steel bones.

Gripper Band Elastic

If you wish to use silicon rubber gripper band elastic for you strapless bra, you will need to use strips of tissue paper to cover the beads of silicon rubber as you sew. The silicon rubber will otherwise stick to the sewing machine.

The sewing process for silicon rubber gripper band elastic is the same as sewing plush elastics to the hems of the bra. The only tricky part is feeding the strips of tissue paper into the sewing machine at the same time as the elastic.

When you have finished sewing, simply tear the tissue paper away from the stitches. Any fragments of paper that are left will dissolve away the first time the bra is washed.