Vintage bullet bras - show and tell!

The other week a friend of mine sent a parcel with the note "I saw these at a vintage market and thought they might be the sort of thing you would like" .. I opened the package and promptly burst into tears of joy and happiness!  Look what was inside ...

Two 1950's  bullet bras!!  They are made from cotton and though constructed differently, have the same spiral stitching design on the cups.  I thought you all might like to have a closer look ...

The first is by "Gordonia of Nottingham".  Despite lots of interwebular searching, I can't find any information on this company except that they had offices in New York too.

I love the way that bullet bras are constructed.  They seem so easy to replicate - all the parts are very simple, no stretchy powernet, no complicated stitches, no underwires, just cotton, elastic, and shaping.  

This Gordonia bra has elastic under the cups at each side, which joins onto a cotton 'cradle' in the middle, and cotton 'wings' at either side which are also attached to the sides of the cups.

The side wings are the same shape and size on either side, but unlike modern bras, they do not meet in the middle.  I am guessing that this particular bra was for a lady with a very wide back.  As you can see, the working part of the strap is a long piece of wide elastic, which joins onto a cotton 'eye' tape with two adjustments.  The hook section joins onto the other wing and is neatly sew in, whereas the eye side is zigzagged onto the elastic and frayed at top and bottom - this leads me to believe that hook and eye tape was not as neatly finished (if at all) as it is these days.  

The inside of the bra cups are unfinished in that there is no lining to shield the breast from either the seams or the stitching - might be quite rough to wear!  Interestingly from a construction point of view, the seams inside the cup seem to be lapped because there are no raw edges visible at all and they are not bound over.  The construction of the cup is in three parts so there is a seam right across the middle, and then one going down to the cradle from the middle of each cup.  The top section of the cup is one piece. The shaping comes from darts placed in these seams.  Click HERE to read a post I wrote last year on the shaping of cups for a bullet bra inspired project.

The lower edge of the cup, on the inside, seams to be finished with cotton tape, and the top edge on the inside has a satin tape finishing the inside - the only 'luxury' apparent in this very 'everyday' bra.  

The straps are attached at the front by a small piece of elastic sewn in between the cup and top binding into a loop which carries two metal rings through which the bra strap passes.  These rings act as the method by which the straps are adjusted - the end is left loose (and unfinished!).  At the back, the straps are sewn into the bra strap at the edge of the 'wings'.

The second bra, is made by "Exquisite Form" and is a '34C'.  Although at first glance these bras look very alike, they are in fact quite different.

This one has the elastic in the middle of the cradle with a peepthrough hole above it, presumably by design but also to allow the a good stretch if needed.    Again the cradle attaches each side to the wings, which are in turn attached to wide elastic at the back with a wide hook and eye tape.  The hook and eye tape on this bra looks as if it is hand whipstitched.

The major difference with this bra is the cup design which is in 4 parts instead of three, so the seams form a 'cross' shape.  On the inside, the seams are not flat felled or lapped as there are raw edges apparent, but the cup is lined with tulle netting - or bobinette.  Presumably for comfort, but also perhaps to give the cups a little body.

Unlike the Gordonia bra, the bottom edges of the cup here are not bound with tape, nor are the side seams joining the cradle to the wings.  The top and bottom edges are finished with narrow cotton tape.  No luxury here but interestingly, the side seams do have a little strip of bobinette sewn over the top of them.  Fiddly!

The straps on this bra join on by a similar method, but no elastic, just a strip of material the same as the straps, sewn into the top of the bra holding a square metal slider as the mode of adjustment for these straps.  Again, the straps are sewn into the back of the bra.  

Now the straps ... I just love how these have been made!  The same on both bras and such a simple method. 

this is the inside

this is the outside

A simple strip of cotton, folded either side and then folded again to meet in the middle, and topstitched down.  That's it!  The stitched side - ie the side where the edges join, is on the outside of the bra.  Utalitarian and decorative all in one go.  My favourite!

I can't imagine that these bras were anywhere near as comfortable or supportive as todays bras, especially for the bigger busted lady, but I think they are gorgeous and I am definitely going to try and replicate them at some point in the not too distant future, perhaps with some beautiful light silk and maybe even a little padding in the cups to enhance the spiral stitching - like these dress cups I made a while ago in a similar style (click link above for full post).  

Retro style padded cups  - unfinished - I grew out of the dress before I finished it! :(

Making retro bra cups for a dress

I have been obsessing over curves still because following my last bra making experiment, my cups were decidedly flat.  Something was wrong .. it all looked ok on paper, and the calculations were correct, but instead of this:

I got this ... 

Which as you can see, is not quite my intended outcome!

The answer, I discovered, after several 'lucid dreams' - do you dream about conundrums and find the answers?  I often do.  Anyway, the answer is in dart distribution.  Doh! Why didn't I think of it before?

Dart distribution is the key.  You put bigger darts where there are bigger curves.  Simples.  Standard measurements can be applied - this I knew.  The standard boob radius (ie: from nipple to ribcage) for a standard pattern size 12, is 8cm.  Did you know that?  

And so armed with this knowledge, and my trusty pattern cutting book by Winifred Aldrich, I set to work on cutting a party dress, with a 'bra' top - I need practical applications to work with sometimes, and I also needed a party dress!  Instead of following the instructions in the book to the letter, I increased the width of the dart from bust to waist, and narrowed the side darts - so the reduction to the waist is the same but the distribution is different.  The instructions in the book don't say this, but they do dictate that you should double the shoulder dart.

This I did .. It worked ... but still a bit baggy at the top line.  I increased the shoulder dart by a further 1.5cm.   These darts then need to be closed on paper, thereby forming side darts.  These side darts create the curve when the two parts are sewn together in a straight line.  After testing a further muslim, and then applying my 'design' to final fabric cups, I ended up with this...

Which i'm pretty damned pleased with.  The top of the bra is quilted as you can see, and the bottom part is re-inforced with some sturdy sew-in interfacing.  During all my cup consternations, I'd ordered myself a new book which confirmed that what I had done, was correct - don't you love it when that happens?   I have been glued to this book for other reasons, not only does it have instructions on how to cut all styles of bra, swimwear, corsets (with cups), bustiers, basques and knickers,  it also has a whole host of other tips and tricks which are not included in my other pattern book but which apply to skirts, dresses and trousers.

.. and the whole ensemble - in creation still - looks like this:

Ignore those pink straps - they are the bra I used to pad out Madge to the correct proportions for my figure.  There will be a halter strap added to the dress,  although with the quilting on the 'bra' it could probably stand up to being topless.

I have now got to work out how to bone the dress as the fabric which is a polyester satin, is very 'slippy' - it needs support, but I don't want to add a whole corsolette into it.  Any ideas?  I have made the lining in one piece but I may have to change it.

Unfortunately, the dress wasn't ready for the party, but I have plenty of time to finish it for the next appropriate event which is August.  Check it out, Vintage at Goodwood!

Making a vintage bra cup

Do you ever have a task in mind, which you have every intention of doing, until you sit down with a cup of tea midmorning, and something on the table, while you are drinking, catches your eye, and you think .. "ooooh ... I could try that" ...  "Right after i've done that other thing i've got to do" ...  And then after your cuppa, you can't quite focus on the original task because you're too busy thinking about the new thing, and so you just have to go with the flow or get nothing done at all .....

And so it was yesterday when I saw this picture of a vintage bra in one of my corsetry books and thought "that looks interesting" ....

Surely it's just a case of dartage, I thought to myself, ignoring the very complicated looking diagrams and even more non-sensical instructions ... no no no .. It must just be a case of closing those two regular darts, tracing the pattern off, and sewing together the resulting parts ...

Er .... no it seems not.  Mr M  came home from work just as I was holding the 'cup' to my bosom and sniggered "are you making dustcaps?" ... :/  It's good to make mistakes though, as the greatest lessons are learned here and navigating through mistakes, is the best way to gain a deeper understanding ...

So it was back to the drawing board, and this time a closer inspection of the dreadfully written instructions which took some improvisation to implement, not least because they seem to be written backwards!!

I got there in the end.  Basically, you have to move the shoulder dart down to the bottom, which doubles the width of the 'waist' dart  (making a 'french dart' infact) ... then you have to add to these darts again so that the resulting shape, cups the boob - the book does not explain how or why, or how much, so I improvised here and made the top darts at 45 degree angles - 0.5 cm each side and added .5cm to each side of the bottom dart.

After tracing off the parts of the pattern, and closing the darts, I ended up with this!  Now all of these pieces are ready to trace off again (there's a lorralorra tracing involved!!)  so that they form smooth pattern shapes ready to be cut from fabric.  The shape of the 'bra' needs tweaking as you can see, and so will the the fit - the book allows for these 'discrepancies' thank goodness - it's always better that they say so don't you think? Else one ends up thinking that there's are more problems than there might be!

The book also says of this style of bra - which is one of three styles given - that if you slant the bottom of the cup and move the straps so that they sit wider, you end up with a plunge bra which pushes up and together, giving a fantastic cleavage.

I think i'm becoming a dart geek!  I find dart manipulation SO intriguing - there are just so many possibilities - it's mind boggling!  My pattern teacher explained it like the segments of an orange.  You take one segment out - that is the dart, but the empty space doesn't have to remain where you put it first.  If you take another segment, and put it in the gap, then you have a gap elsewhere - do you see what I mean?