Hello all! Today I'm going to share the fitting process for the bra portion of my British Outfit.

In the last post I discussed the designing and drafting process, and finished with the first calico toile. I had tacked in where I wanted the design lines to be (as you can see below) but did not cut them as separate pieces, because I wanted to get the basic fit right first. In the first fitting I shortened the straps by 3", lengthened the CB by 1/2" on either side and lowered the CF by 2". The excess at each SF was pinned out in a dart.

I found that when I transferred that dart straight to the pattern piece, it warped it too much, so I divided the amount that needed to go and split it evenly on the pattern piece. I then ended up changing the design lines slightly (10 points if you can spot where!) and cut down those lines to divide the pattern into upper cup and lower cup pieces.

In the second fitting there was still some excess in the right cup, so I adjusted the pattern in the same way I did for the first fitting. After looking back at the fitting photos (above) I decided to use the pattern pieces for the right cup for both cups in the next fitting, because the shape of the left one looks a bit off. Below you can see the difference in the pattern pieces for each side. I ended up using the pattern piece on the right for both cups of the bra.

 For the third fitting I decided to use a drapier fabric that was more like the silk that is my final fabric. No changes were made in this fitting as I was happy with the fit.

Below are the final pattern pieces ready to cut out of the main fabric.

So that was the fitting process for my bra! In the next instalment of this series I'm going to discuss my experiments with bundle dyeing.

Until then, thanks for reading!

Lauren xx