But who can afford €60 a pop for bralettes? I like to have as many as possible in all of the colours!
So the reason I opted for the Jordy is the easy availability of fabric kits especially curated for this pattern. This bralette is relatively simple in terms of requirements compared to other more complicated bras and bralettes which require you to figure out and hunt down up to eleven or twelve different components to make it up. The Jordy only requires the bra cup fabric, three types of elastic pair of rings and sliders and your bra hooks and eyes. Erin and others have some great kits put together with everything you need to make the item up. I ordered the raspberry and nude kit and bought the pdf version of the pattern here. At about €10.50 for this kit (she does have more expensive nicer ones but I thought I might make a mess of it so for my first bought something reasonably priced). Even her most expensive kit for a bra on its own is only about €16 and very affordable. You could make 5 Jordys for the cost of buying one designer bralette.
The kit arrived beautifully wrapped in tissue paper and I could hardly contain my excitement. My family were lucky to get a Christmas dinner because I really wanted to just get stuck in. Using some massive self control I managed to wait until December 26th to start.
Erin's instructions were uncomplicated and she has even got a Jordy sew along tutorial on YouTube that I found particularly useful.
The wicking fabric I chose did not appear to have an obvious right side or wrong side which made it trickier to work with. I chose to use picot elastic and it was my first time sewing decorative elastics. The whole project took about 3 and a half hours on my elderly Toyota sewing machine. No special skills required beside a basic zig zag stitch. No twin needles or sergers required. I mention the importance of the right side wrong side issue because when I tried it on I realised I had sewed the left cup together the wrong way around with the inner cup section on the outside and vice versa. So my left boob pointed the wrong way just a little. It was one of those devastating sewing moments when you think "oh crap". To make matters worse I couldn't find my seam ripper to undo the harm and I had some serious concerns about how I was going to redo it given how the seams were so tiny and how I had trimmed the excess off of everything. It was going to require some epic tiny seams to fix.
I went online and ordered some tailors chalk and a new seam ripper from an Irish sewing shop Sew Irish in the hopes that I could learn from it and soon be wearing my comfy new bralette.
The items arrived and it took me almost as long to carefully unpick my zigzagging on just one cup as it had taken me to make the whole thing! I carefully pinned the cups and turned them over to double check that they were the right way around this time. It took three attempts to get it right! I really was having a bit of a senior moment there. Once pinned I flew though the rest of Erin's instructions and the bralette came together beautifully with my teeny tiny seams doing just fine. I even remembered to have the correct thread colours on top and in the bobbin to coordinate with the cup and band fabrics this time.
Having worn it for a few days I think the sizing on my one is slightly off. Not the patterns fault at all. I suspect the band might need adjusting on me as it slides up my back slightly over the course of the day. I need to study up on bra fitting as it appears to be somewhat of a science. I will tweak it and see. Otherwise it is a very comfortable wear. I don't have an overlocker (yet, but it is on my to-do list for this year) so the inside looked a little less tidy than I would normally like. I see lots of sewists saying its a lounge bralette i.e. they wouldn't wear it out of the house but mine looked quite respectable and passed the "if you were hit by a bus test" in my opinion.
Sewing the elastics was absolutely fine. The instructions along with an easy does it approach did the trick nicely. It was a lovely feeling looking at my well applied picots peeping out from the edge of the bra. Its a shame that the wicking fabric isn't stretchy enough to make a matching pair of briefs but Erin advised me that I could use it for a front panel and use something stretchy like mesh or stretch lace for the rest. I haven't seen anything that grabs me just yet. I would love to do another Jordy, maybe this time the foam cup version with fold over elastic and possibly line it with some tricot.
If you have made your Jordy bralette I would love to see it in the comments.xo
