Bra extenders... not just for extending! » All bra adventures

Bra extenders... not just for extending!

So am I the only one that loves these little things? You can get around 3-6 of them for under 2 bucks on eBay and they come in so many colours and 1 hook to 5 hooks. A lot cheaper than what you can get in the store. The only downfall is that you have to wait 15-30 days because they ship from HK or China.

But I was wondering if anyone else has used them for alterations? They've come in handy when I needed to alter a bra band to make it tighter. I made a picture showing basically how they'd work.

So the picture of the bra band, the black lines show how short the band would be after cutting some excess off. The white line shows the new difference in height. That bra band which was normally a 2 hook closure would now have the height of 3 hooks.

So either you alter that pink elastic line to curve down the wing material so it doesn't wrinkle and you can use the same old 2 hooks (or some people aren't bothered by it and leave it), but I like doing it this way because I prefer the wider back with more hooks.

I cut down the red line of the extender, making sure not to cut the metal, and leave it open because when attaching it to the wings I sew it shut with a tiny bit of the wing material inside of the extender. You'll have to rip the side seams of the extender down the orange squiggly lines so that they become flaps and easier to close down on the band when re-attaching.

A & B shows where they go, which is simple since it's the same parts that it had before, just bigger to accommodate the thicker band. And voila! Usually you can't even tell it's been altered (even if it's by hand) because it doesn't involve any fancy zig-zag stitches or such. I bet the results would be amazing with a sewing machine too, you'd just have to be more careful about not hitting the metal hooks/eyes.

Sometimes you'll have to alter the straps in the back so they don't sit so close together, only if the alteration was extreme, but that's a whole nother thing. Hope it was clear enough!

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Shared on Dec 05, 2012 Flag this