Brampton Home & Garden (formerly That's Sew Venice): Bra ????

After discovering my love of lingerie making....I decided I really needed a better way to store my bra's. I put so much time and work into them I no longer was ok with letting them hang from the door handle, since it'll stretch out the elastic and cup. Since they're mainly foam, I can't flip one cup inside the other...what to do???

I read the amazing book The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying up. And was inspired to give my whole room, closet and drawers a complete overhaul. I was still left trying to figure out how to store my bra's but decided I wanted to be able to have them handy, and since I'd used such lovely fabrics, I might as well enjoy seeing them. I looked all over the internet/pinterest for a fabric box to store them in. Now there are a few places you can order plain ones, but I really wanted to use this lovely fabric I've been hording from Country Clothesline, for 2 years....I figured using it in my closet where I get to see it every day is a great idea. I plan to make more things for my closet with it.

Here's what I did. I started with Anna's adorable Berry Basket pattern. It's a free pattern for a small fabric basket, but it was the depth height I wanted, and I could see how I could save on fabric easily. I just had to play around with the dimensions.

If you use a solid piece of fabric for the outside and the lining, it is pretty simple to do. I of course had to make things difficult, but I really didn't want to waste my lovely fabric for the bottom and sides of the box that I won't see. If you plan on using my dimensions or your own, read through the tutorial first so get a feel for the pattern, then start drawing up your own. It would be nice to have a pdf of some different sizes.

First thing I had to do was decide the dimensions I wanted. I measured my bras and found that 16" width would fit them nicely. My shelf isn't very big, so I only wanted it to be about " deep. I decided on a side wall of 5" so I could easily see what was in there. As you can see they fit perfectly, so if your planning on doing this for your bra's as well you might as well just use my dimensions.

So you take your piece of fabric and fold it in half one way, and then in half again. Measure from the folded sides only. If you want it to be 16", you then add 10 (5" on each side) and then divide in half since it's folded, so cut the one side at 13". The other side is (12+10)/2=11, so cut that one 11".

If your using too solid pieces of fabric then cut off the top corner 5"x5". Make sure to cut the corner that has no folded sides. in this case that would be the one at the very top. As you can see I pieced my outside but left the lining whole, I cut it off after I sewed it, but you see the 5 x 5" square easily.

Since I was piecing my outside one, I had to do some more math. I cut my bottom piece at 16.5" x 12.5" the side pieces 2 at 16.5x5" and 2 at 12 x 5"(don't add the other half inch or you won't get a proper corner. do the longer pieces first and just center the sides in the middle, it'll all work out when you sew them together.). I used some med interfacing on the outer fabric, and then I sewed them together with a 1/4 inch seam, and pressed flat

After sewing them together, following the Berry Basket tutorial, this is how it should look.

I wanted a nice soft feel to it, so decided to use some batting. I'm low on fusible fleece so just used some med loft batting, I attached it with my trusty Elmer's glue stick. You can skip this step or use your preferred batting.

To add some rigidity I used this cross stitch plastic I got at the dollar store you can use what ever you like. I also used some pieces of cardboard in the sides, to keep them up since they're quite long. Since I used the cardboard the binding had to be hand sewn for the most part, so keep that in mind when working on it. Some heavier interfacing might have been just fine. It really depends on the side and how supportive you want it to be. Since mine is sitting on the shelf, it doesn't need to be firm on the bottom, but if you do want to add something there, just do it before you do the top stitching, and you can slide it in the side easily.