I dyed the Portia/Princess hybrid

Original post can be found here.

I used Rit Dye in the purple color. As the water was boiling, I read the side of the bottle that says not to use it on polyester fabrics. I already had my mind set, so I was going to do it anyway. But I had a feeling that it was going to dye, because I the dyed a white dress with pink Rit Dye, and the back of it that had mesh, didn’t dye. So I crossed my fingers. I probably used more dye than I needed to, but I wanted to make sure that the bra came out dark. I really wanted to dye it brown, but I forgot to go to the dye section when I was there yesterday.

On to the pictures:

In the above picture it looks blackish, but it’s not. It’s very purple.

I believe the polyester warning on the Rit dye bottle was for the stitching, in my dress the stitching stayed the original color. And as you can see the thread is still white, as is the floral design and the lacing. Well it actually got tinted somewhat.

I don’t know if this occurred because I used hot water & dye on the bra, but the lacing is comIng undone form one area on both of the cups. Oddly enough, on both cups it’s on the right side (when looking at it).

Inner part of the cup

Band

The floral design

Underneath the floral design

The fit:

I don’t know if it was the dye, or it was the scorching hot water, but the bra shrunk. From my experience being a denim addict, I know that really hot water (too hot to touch) can shrink jeans.

so yeah, it shrunk, a good amount. Before I needed to alter the bra, now I don’t think there’s enough room to alter it. It shrunk enough that now it fits. The band, however feels really tight. I ordered some new extenders, so I’ll probably wait to wear this until those come in. Enough blabbering.

Right side

Left side

No gapping.

A little space in the upper panel on smaller breast.

Side view

I initially was going to make this a two part post, with the dye being one post, and the actual alteration another post, but I’m not going to alter it now.

What do you think?

Altered Claudette Dessous 30E

The original post about the pink Claudette Dessous can be found here.

I felt the band was too stretchy to fit properly. I’m not particularly busty, and my breasts are self supporting, but I wanted the band to be tighter. I did want the cups to be a hair smaller, so I tried to shrink it via the hot water method. The heat did seam to mess up the fibers on the lower half of the cup. Oddly enough it seems like it’s on the upper portion of the lower half (if that makes sense), not the lining part. The hot water didn’t shrink the cups/bra.

First part. I used a non matching thread so you could see. The one website where I saw this used beige thread on a beige bra, so I couldn’t see where exactly they sewed. Initial stitching. Band was still stretchy.

So I went over it in the opposite direction.

This is how it looked line on:

You can see the space at the top of the cup on my smaller breast

Side view

Band is is still very stretchy. 😣

And the gore still doesn’t tack.

As a side note, I went to my room to get something, and you could see my nip through my shirt. I wasn’t even cold.

This was still to stretchy, so I decided to take in the upper part of the band as well.

The gore still didn’t tack. 😕

Initial S&S

Second S&S. Looks better, but I had nipple showing in the ultra sheer area.

I stitched the bottom of the wing

How it looks on:

Although I didn’t adjust the straps, it doesn’t look like the band is riding up anymore.

From the side

The gore still doesn’t tack at the bottom, but the bra feels a lot better. It’s not overtly tight like some of my other bras, but I can feel the difference from before. The cups also fit better. The smaller breast still has some space at the top, but there isn’t much wrinkling. I don’t want to redo what I did, but it looks crazy with the red & blue stitching. If I do end up redoing it, I’ll probably dust off my sewing machine and use that.

Curvy Kate “alterations”

I really tried to make this bra fit. I really did. But nothing worked. 😩😩

This post is mostly going to be pictures, and it’s going to be long. You can see the original thread here.

Attempt #1. I just randomly folded fabric over, and pinned it into place. Looked “okay” from the front, but there was still a lot of space at the top.

Attempt #2

Attempt #3. I tried to take out the top portion, by folding it under, hoping that it would take out some of the top openness… But it was still too open at the top.

Attempt #4. I took out considerably less than in attempt 1 & 2. It was way too open at the top.

Attempt #5. I took in the bottom, but it started from the middle, instead of by the gore. Doing so, oddly made the bra very shallow at the bottom. This wasn’t the smartest idea, because it also left a lot of space between the top of the gore, and the top of the cup closest to the gore, and also at the back of the cup.

Attempt #6. This was just a mess. I gathered some fabric, and pinned it in place.

This probably could have turned out better if the fabric of the bra wasn’t as thick as it was. And f the cup wasn’t so big.

I really don’t think there’s a way that I can successfully alter the cups without getting scissors involved and breaking out the sewing machine. I’m not going to do that. 😔

Raspberry Marcie alteration

As I’ve said before, I bought this bra specifically to alter. So here is what I did to alter the band.

First off I want to show the differences in length between this and the yellow Marcie in 30dd:

As you can see the raspberry is longer on both sides.

I pinned the bras so the seam behind the wire is lined up as well as the part of the band where the strap is attached.

Here you can see the excess fabric

So I just folded it over. (I was going the lazy route with this)

I pinned the excess fabric in place. * I attempted to try it on, but the pins started sticking me*

I measured the top and compared with both sizes.

The pink was 4 inches

The yellow was 4.25 inches

I hand sewed using the backstitch  method. I actually did the stitching backwards. I wanted the neater part to be on the outside, but it was on the inside. I didn’t want to do that stitch in the first place, but it seemed like it would be stronger than doing a running stitch.

Outer side of bra

Inner area of bra

I thought the .25″ difference would be okay… But it wasn’t. The band was too tight.

A closeup of the alteration while wearing the bra.

Obviously the fit of the bra is better than it was originally, but the band was a little too tight. I was thinking about keeping it like that and just wearing an extender, but it just makes more sense for me to do it over and leave a little more fabric.
I took measurements, and unstretched the band is 22.75 unstretched (close to the unstretched measurement of the yellow), but stretched, it’s only 26.75, which is smaller than what I need/prefer.

I took out the stitching, and redid the while thing. It literally took my about 2 hours to re-stitch the bra. I kept getting knots in the thread, so I had to cut it and start over. When I sew by hand, I like to make sure I have enough thread, so that I don’t have to re-thread in the middle of my project, but I think I had too much thread.

I remeasured and got about 4.5″ this time (.25″ longer than the yellow Marcie)

When I re-stitched, I did it on the right side.

Outer side of bra

Inner side of bra

The new fit:

A closeup of the alteration while being worn

As you can see, on my smaller side there is some wrinkling in the cup,  that can probably be fixed my tightening the strap a bit. The band is looser, perhaps a hair looser than what it should be, but I’m not redoing it.

Currently, the band unstretched is 23.5 inches, and 28 inches stretched

 

---

 

So, I would recommend anyone thinking about doing this to:

-if you can, measure out how much on each side you want to take out. I didn’t, and I could have saved myself 2 hours if I did.

-try the bra on when you have the pins in, before you start sewing. That way if it is too tight or too loose, you can fix it easily. Also place the pins on the outside of the bra (so they don’t stick you when you try them on)

but really, if you can, try to avoid doing this alteration altogether. Because while the bra fits me now, it doesn’t fit as well as a 30dd would/does. And one thing that most likely will end up bothering me with this particular bra, the gore is higher on 32d than it is on 30dd.

Unfortunately, I will have to do this again, because I have a 32d Freya doodle that I need to shorten.

**update:

I wore this bra today. (2/10/16) I wrote the post a few days ago… It wasn’t the most comfortable. It’s actually the most uncomfortable out of all the Marcie bras I have. The gore irritated me a good portion of the morning. I attempted to bend/push the wires forward (although I’m not entirely sure how to do that), and it did alleviate the pressure I was feeling, but when I looked down at my chest, it looked like one wire was where it was supposed to be, the other was resting on my tissue, like this _/

Also, on the left side where the alteration is, was stabbing me. 😕 It wasn’t bothering me on the right side, which is odd. I’m thinking I may have to add a piece of fabric. It was mainly irritating me at the top and the bottom of the band, where the thicker fabric was.

Cleo Minnie (7431) alteration

So last night I decided to alter my Cleo Minnie so it would fit better.

What I did was lower the top section by taking a portion of it out (by taking it out, I mean folding the extra fabric under). While I can definitely see a difference, I don’t know if I like it any better.

I took it the right side (my bigger side):

 While it does fit the top area better, it also pushing the gore into my breast tissue, giving my breast an odd shape/look.

but from the side it looks a lot more rounded.

Altered on left                             Regular on right

Excuse the pic on the right. I think whenever I use my left hand to take a pic it makes me stand in an odd way. So while in not standing the same way in both pics, I think you can see the difference in shape. From the front, the altered side looks flatter on the side. I don’t like that because it makes me look skinnier.

The top of the bra is very visible through my thin tank.

A side view with my tank on. Again I’m not standing straight in the pic on the right, but I think you can still see the pointiness vs. the roundness on the left pic.