I am not sure how many of you have experienced winter in the northern latitudes. This winter, in the Midwestern U.S., has been one of the coldest in decades. I guess I should have consulted the Farmer’s Almanac when I was scheduling which articles I was going to write and when, because taking pictures in a brassiere when it is -20 degrees Fahrenheit outside is no fun not matter how warm the house is!!

But, for the sake of all you lovely readers, I endured the cold to complete yet another undergarment from Ms. Conover’s Dressmaking Series. For this lesson we actually go back to the very beginning of her underwear series to complete a 1921 Brassiere. I found it interesting that this was her first garment in the underwear series, given that it is also one of her most complicated pieces. I suspect that the brassiere was considered to be the most important undergarment, therefore earning first place in order of construction. 

The early 1920s was a very fascinating time of transition in undergarments. Corsets were well on their way out but there was not quite a defined replacement for them yet.

In modern vocabulary, most of us read the word 'brassiere' as an old-fashioned way of referring to a 'bra', but in 1921 when Ms. Conover was writing this a brassiere was its own thing. It was not yet the garment that we would come to recognize as the modern “lift and separate” bra. Instead it was half corset; half snug fitting, structured tank top. Generally it could still be worn with a corset to provide bust support/containment or it could be made to be worn as a “corset” on its own. Both steel and feather boning are mentioned as suitable boning options.

Usually Ms. Conover starts each of her garment sections with a brief description of the garment or with some advice on how to wear the garment but she doesn’t do that for the brassiere. That makes me kind of sad. I would have loved to have heard what she had to say on the subject. She just jumps right into construction on this one so I guess we will do the same.

I am not going to reprint her directions word for word. If you would like to follow along and read the details for yourself, you can do that here. In my version we start on page 17.

 

When making the “Easy-to-fit Brassiere” we will be using the very same block pattern that we have used for all of Ms. Conover’s patterns  If you need reference on how to make your block pattern then please read back through my article on making an Envelope Chemise. This is part of what I love so much about Ms. Conover’s lessons - that they all have the same starting point.

 

Tools and Supplies

• Tracing paper,
• Ruler,
• Pen/pencil,
• Tape measure,
• Less than 1 yard of fabric for a mock-up,
• Less than 1 yard fashion fabric for final piece,
• Hook & eye tape (length of center front measurement), or individual hooks and eyes to be sewn on by hand,
• Bias tape for finishing edges or other suitable trim,
• Cotton twill tape,
• Boning.

 

Using your tracing paper, the first thing we want to do is to trace off the outline of our block pattern. I traced might to just below waist level. Our finished brassiere will be just at or slightly above the waist. I always cut my mock up a little long and mark where I want my finished length to be after I have tried it on.

 

You see from looking at Figures 28 & 29 what we want our draft to eventually look like. The solid lines are the original block outline and the dashed lines are going to be the outline of the newly created pieces.  

 

Now get ready for a lot of points and measurements... I am only going to take you through the main steps. I really don’t want to mess up Ms. Conover’s good instructions by trying to rewrite them myself and I also don’t want to just give you an article entirely composed of someone elses writing, out of copyright or not.

Ms. Conover’s first step is to determine bust point and bust measurement:

“At a point about eight inches down from the neck in the front mark a point as D and draw a line from this point to the bottom of the armhole as the line DE. This line should correspond to an imaginary line at the fullest part of the bust on the person. To fix D in exactly the right place, measure on the person from the base of the neck in the front to the fullest point of the bust, measuring at the center front. In the back square a line from the center back to the bottom of the armhole, line DC, Fig. 29."

Right off the bat I figured this pattern might give me some trouble.  Eight inches down does not correlate to the fullest part of the bust on a size DD.  I was more in the range of 9-10” down, depending on whether or not I was wearing a bra to take the measurement.  So... already my draft is looking a little different from the illustration.

If you want to work through this draft yourself, I would highly recommend working through Ms. Conover’s draft system right from the book. I am guessing that if you are a small C cup or smaller you won’t have much trouble with the draft at all. If you are larger than a C cup, you are probably going to have to make some adjustments to the pattern.

You can see here how my pattern drafted out. The front pieces had an odd slant to them but I figured I would give it a try as drafted before I made any major changes.

 

I traced of the new pattern pieces and added seam allowance.

 

My first muslin toile went together very quick and simply. For some reason (probably because I didn’t read the instructions all of the way though) I thought the brassiere was supposed to have a side closure. That is what I did on the toile. Makes it challenging to get into, that’s for sure!

 

It actually ended up fitting much better than I was expecting. It was snug in the waist and gapped though the sides at the bust, but overall it was pretty good. The shoulders fit great which is an area I usually have a lot of trouble with.

 

From my pinned out alteration marks, I re-drew the new pattern lines:

 

At this point I was happy enough with the fit to go ahead and try the pattern out on my fashion fabric. I used a heavier brushed sateen cotton that was repurposed from a bed linen set. It was a very soft but sturdy cotton that would give support without bulk.

Again, the pieces went together very quickly. I trimmed the seams and top-stitched each seam down. As you can see, I continued not to read the instructions and decided (without close scrutiny) that the garment opening was meant to be in the back. Why this made sense to me I have no idea. It did work better than the side opening. I’m blaming it on the cold.

 

I achieved a much better fit with just the few simple alterations I made to the original. I had a small amount of gapping at the neckline that you see pinned in here.

 

Once I made the neckline adjustment, I stitched channels for my boning using the remaining seam allowance. I was then able to test the fit with both spiral and flat steel boning. I immediately liked the look and feel of the spiral steel better than the flat steel. The cotton fabric was too light to support the structure of the flat steel. The pictures don’t really capture the smooshing that the flat steel causes, but it was not pretty. I also think that over time the flat steel would become very uncomfortable. With such a lightweight fabric there is little to no protection for delicate skin and eventually the flat steel would wear though the fabric.

 

At the last minute I decided that I needed to make another brassiere with the proper front opening - so I whipped up the new one over a couple of hours. These really do come together very quickly once you have your pattern down. The bust lines were bothering me so I shifted the lines around just slightly and I raised the neckline back up a little. The previous alterations had taken the neckline down a little further than I thought I wanted. I also went ahead and stitched cotton twill tape on the inside of each seam to create boning channels. Ms. Conover recommends making button holes in your boning tape for easy removal of boning to be able to launder your garment. I don’t have a good button hole option on my machine so I just tucked my tape ends in like so.

 

I finished all of my edges off with cotton bias tape. Since my camera batteries were dead I decided to take the bra for a test drive and see how comfortable it actually was for an extended period of time. I have to say it wasn’t too bad. I am a committed underwire wearer so for me to feel even sort of comfortable is surprising.  It is definitely not a lift and separate type of bra but it is an adequate containment device. Oh, and I did not actually have any boning in it. I didn’t have the right lengths on hand to finish it off so I left the boning out for the time being. It was still very sturdy - even without the boning.

So this is what the brassiere looked like after several hours of wear.  I still ended up with some 'gapposis' at the neckline, but I like the shape of the bust seams better now - and while the front hooks make it much easier to get into the brassiere, they also show under clothing. I think in the future I would actually go with the back closure just to maintain the smooth front, and it does look like I could take things in a little bit more right under the bust.

The rest of the pictures are comparison shots of how (if at all) the different brassieres, or lack of, change my silhouette. As usual Ms. Conover has given me much food for thought and plenty of entertainment.

 

 

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