This is one of my favorite bras, but I started wearing BMs long after it was sold out and never got it. It's been on my wishlist for years.

I saw a set pop up on a polish craigslist type of site and the 75F size was such a tease! So close yet so far https://d28qt14g3opchh.cloudfront.net/smileys/icon_sad.gif" alt=":(" />
Being obsessed with the bra, and bad at financial decisions, I had my friend martka00 get it for me.

It came and surprise! It was too big, far too big. I sadly listed it.

The other day I decided to just keep it and experiment with it. I couldn't wear it anyway and I didn't have it listed for much so I thought it was worth a try.

I cut it up today.
This was really stressful for me, because I can't sew very well. I have a sewing machine, but I don't even know how to thread it. I've never really altered anything and the last time I needed a band taken in I paid Noob to do it for me.

Not knowing how to sew a zigzag by hand, and unable to use my sewing machine, I needed to figure out a way to cut the band down without undoing and reattaching the strap material along the wing. The original hook and eye set of this bra was really small and there was no way I was going to be able get all that material back into it once it was cut down. I ended up using two three row black extenders I had around but had never used. I removed the hooks from one and all the eyes from the other. These were tall enough for my purpose and even though the wings are still wrinkled from being crammed in there, I think it worked out pretty well!

Now the band stretches to 29" exactly, which is my happy place. Cutting down the band so much also moved the straps in towards the center which is good as they were wide before.
With a smaller band, the cups fit better. They are still too big and the upper lace is too loose for me, but I don't think this is visible under a shirt and I may just leave it as is. I've left the cup measurements blank for the time being, until I decide if I'd like to alter them or not. I'll need to actually wear it for an extended period of time to see if the loose lace annoys me.

I'll update here if I alter it more, but I wanted to get this down before I forgot how I did it.

I also added this as a new bra and marked my original measurements as no longer owned, so the dimensions of this bra in 75F are preserved.

Update: the wires were too wide and were digging into my underarm and sternum, I couldn't tolerate them with movement.
I swapped them out for 65F SM wires which are both narrower and shorter. This provided immediate relief from wire pain but left a lot of excess material at the gore. Out of curiosity I folded it down which pulled a lot of the lose lace taut. This bra is not, nor will it ever be, an amazing fit but it is good enough. It's wearable and it doesn't look awful. I would still love to actually have my size, but I'm really pleased with how it turned out.
I added a few pictures, if you look at the angle and side you can see the marks on my body from the old wires.

This bra is not owned any more

Updated on Dec 23, 2018 Flag this

• Show all comments (16)
• Glad your bra surgery was successful!

• You did a really nice job! It looks great on

• Nice! I wonder if altering the cup would also be a possibility, to sorta make the stretch lace tighter so it's not flapping around. But then that would also require cup depth to be altered and I can't even begin to figure out how that is done.
  Maybe out btb seamstresses can pitch in with ideas.

• 3

  I think, if I do mess with the cups, I will either tack excess material to the bottom of the wire channel along the vertical seam, thus reducing cup height. Or tack the material to the wire channel along the horizontal seam and reduce apex and upper depth.
  I could also put in a dart, but that might require more skill than I have.

• You are very brave do this yourself! How is the wire for your frame?

• 2

  brasaremean they are too wide and a bit too tall. I'm not sure yet if they're painfully so, though.

  I do have narrower wires I can swap them out for, but I think that would make the depth problem worse.

• Impressive alteration! I wonder if I could do this with any of my ill-fitting, but pretty bra. You have given me so many ideas!

• 1

  I always fear wire replacement would make the cups deeper too. I think it would require a complete cup reconstruction to actually make it fit, but also if you think about it, the breast that escapes (if you have soft tissue like me, it literally fills out the cup to the wire no matter how wide it is) to the wire would be contained in the new wire, so maybe it wouldn't happen. Does that even make sense?

• brasaremean It does to me since my breast tissue does the same thing. The path of least resistance for the breast tissue. This only works if the cup is compressive enough to squish the tissue sideways though, so may not help in the cup is too big to begin with. :-/

• 1

  Wow! I see you can’t let go this bra! :D I’m looking forward to see you end results as looks promising !

• 1

  I really can't martka00 !

  I'm wearing this today as a test run. Thinking about my solutions to the loose lace issue, I'm not going to be reducing it vertically. I'll probably lose wire projection if I do and it is so blissfully deep at the bottom, I don't think I want to give that up.

  I think reducing it horizontally is also not the solution. Ewa's sister sizes do not scale, so while in theory this should be a 65G now, it is not. I'd say it is more a 65FF but with extra tall cups. I'm not having any trouble filling the bra out where it needs projection, which is why I'm getting a nice shape out of it despite the lace being floppy, the lace is simply laying on the shallow part of my upper roots where there's nothing to fill it. If I want to fix it, I will have to dart it. I may not as it seems to only be an aesthetic issue and not a fit issue.

  brasaremean my tissue is moderately soft, but I have pretty narrow roots and even if I squish down, my breasts don't really go to the sides, so I can't fill out wider wires. If I wear a bra that's too small in the cup it just squashes me down and hurts since my breasts are firm enough through the center to push back against that pressure even if there's space that could be filled on the side. Does that make sense?
  My issue with wider wires is my rib cage is really boney and I find Ewa's wires really hard, if they sit on my rib cage they sometimes hurt a lot. These are not awful, about .5" wider than I like, but we'll see.

• 1

  Did you try bending the wire to follow your body curve? Then just bend the ends slightly away so they don't poke your underarm tissue.

• 3

  Yep, I do that with all my bras actually since who the heck has a flat torso?

  I bent the ends towards each other to make them slightly narrower also, but that only helps so much.

  They've been okay so far, but I've also not been really active yet today.

• 1

  ikr I don't know why wires don't come pre-bent :/

• 1

  I altered the wires and gore. I added more pics and updated the review.

• Wow! Those alterations made such a difference. It looks beautiful on you.

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