Maya long line bra “Frosty”

Here is the bra that I made from B’wear’s December kit “Frosty”. The design of this bra was totally inspired by the lace.

The cups

I started with the cups. The cups of the Maya bra consist of three pieces. Due to my small cup size, these three pieces are rather small. I was not too fond of the thought of cutting the beautiful lace into such small pieces. I also was not in the mood to try pattern matching. This led to the idea of foam cups with a lace overlay. I sewed the foam cups as usual and pinned the lace to the top of the cups. I then roughly cut the lace and folded it on the bottom of the cup until I was happy. This took quite some time and I think I redid this at least twice. As my foam was kind of yellowish, I added a layer of white lycra between foam and lace. The top edge of the foam/lycra cup is finished with foldover-elastic. The lace is fixed with a few bartacks. Finally, I handbasted all around the cups, so that everything would stay in place for the next steps.

The frame

My original plan was to make the usual frame that comes with the Maya bra. But when I placed the cups on the lace to determine how I wanted the frame to be, again the lace looked so beautiful as a whole that I decided to change the frame to a longline bra.

To do this, I used the tutorial from Liz Sews. You just lengthen the center to the length you want and adjust the side seam. As I wanted to keep the scalloped edge, I drew a straight line from the center to the side seam.

A bit trickier was the back. Usually, in a long-line bra, you would use a hook & eye tape that covers the whole height of the back band. I decided to change the back to a scoop back. This allowed me to use the 2×3 hook & eye closure that was provided with the kit. As I did not have any idea how deep the curve should be, I used the Malborough bra pattern as a guide. In hindsight, this was not the best idea. Due to the height that needs to be covered, the end of the curve ended up quite far to the side. The result is that the straps are a bit wideset. They do not fall off the shoulders, though.

Final thoughts

This is the first long-line bra that I ever made, and also the foam cups were a first for the Maya bra. I think that I really got the most out of the lace. he bra is very comfortable and it just looks so pretty and I am so proud of my make. I still have a lot of the lace left for matching panties. Alas, I don’t know what pattern I should use. They should be special, like the bra, and suitable for non-stretch lace. Do you have any suggestions?

Disclaimer: I got the fabric for free to sew a sample. I was not asked to write a blog post or advertise in any manner. All opinions are my own.