Maya bra von AFI Atelier

The Maya-bra from AFI Atelier is a free pattern, but it comes without instructions. Since I’ve been dreaming about the AFI Exquisite Bra for quite some time, I tried this pattern first to get a feeling for AFI Atelier’s patterns.

According to my measurements, I am a size 75A. However, my bust line is very wide, so I use an underwire size of 80B. Using the youtube videos from Liz-sews (highly recommended), I adjusted the pattern by starting with 80B for the band. For the cups, I printed out both sizes, 80B and 75A, took the base of 80B, and reduced it to 75A for the cup volume.

I first sewed a sample bra from “sheer cup lining”, because I wanted to use that also for my real bra. “Sheer cup lining” is completely inelastic. Unexpectedly, the sample bra fit perfectly, had no wrinkles or anything. I only had to shorten the band a little bit.

Next, I used a kit from B’wear. There are a few wrinkles on the top cup here. I suspect but am not entirely sure, that it is because I combined stretchy lace with non-elastic lining. The band is a bit too short, probably because the powernet was much firmer than the one from the sample bra. I still used the leftover lace on two panties (as always, the tried-and-true Watson pattern). I’m not quite as happy with them this time, it’s the fold-over elastic. I guess the quality wasn’t that good (it was a fold-over elastic bundle from Wien2002 ), it was very soft and I learned that if the stitch size is too small, it curls very quickly. I got good results with a zigzag stitch of 2.0/2.5.

For my second attempt, I took a kit from sewy, which I had lying around for years. Again, the lace is stretchy. I tried to compensate by cutting the lace parts a little smaller than the lining parts. Unfortunately, that didn’t help, again I have wrinkles in the top cup, even more than in the first version. The lace is also much less stable. For the panties, I tried being creative. Alas, after one slip, the creativity was gone, for a second it was no longer there. Also, there was not much left of the green tulle. By the way, I discolored the slip directly after the first wash, it is now unfortunately no longer so bright white. I almost suspect that it was due to the green elastic. In the future, I will pre-treat dark-colored elastics/lace with hot water.

After taking the photos, both bra and panties still got some bows

Generally, I am already quite happy with the Maya bra. I will try some more variations, also with stretch lining (tulle). In any case, the Maya bra is a solid basic pattern.