How to work out your fabric consumption for your bra
Weirdly whilst I was writing this blog, I got a request from someone asking how to work out how much fabric they need for their bra design.
So here we are, I’m going to show you how to work out how much fabric you will need for your bra. I will also cover in the next blog how to cost it all out.
So with a bra I’ve previously made which is made from galloon lace and power-net, you can pick lace and power-net and work out how much fabric consumption you need.
You need to ensure the lace is the same width if you wanting to work with different laces, you will also need to ensure that when working out the fabric that your bigger patterns fit).
The ruler shows 50cm with the lingerie patterns laid up.
With the lace it’s pretty easy, you lay all your pattern pieces along the lace. Then you are measuring the amount of lace with pattern pieces laid out along it. All these pieces lay once along at 50cm, I would have to double this as each piece needs two pieces. Regarding the CF I will only need one, so when I double this fabric (1m) if it isn’t there there is space for a wing or cup piece, so I take this into consideration when working out more than a one meter of fabric
So 1m amount of lace makes one bra so 3 meters of fabric will make 3 bras, but because I know there is space after the first meter where the CF would be when I hit 3m I would be able to fit in the wings in one meter and the cups in the other therefore 3m will make 4 bras.
You always need to know much 1 meter will make as that is the amount that usually buy fabric in.
I always choose a pattern that is as close to the middle of my size range as possible to get an accurate quantity.
To work out fabric consumption for the power-net is a bit different, you will need know how wide the fabric is. The fabric for this bra was 120cm wide, I then get a piece of paper or card, and mark out a rectangle that is 25cmx60cm - this is 1/8 of the meter of the fabric. (25cm is quarter of the meter and the fabric is 120cm wide so 60cm will be 1/2 that).
I then lay out the patterns according to the selvedge and draw around each piece, with the CF I draw one for every two pieces of the other bra pieces I draw around because like in the lace the CF only appears once in the bra not twice. I don’t turn the patterns over to mirror them that is why I’ve split the fabric meter in four.
So with this pattern 1/4 meter of fabric will fit 2 lots of bra patterns in (so 1) bra, and because you’ve only drawn in on half of the width of the fabric, 1/4 of a meter of the full width will be 2 bras, then time by 4 to get the full meter and 1m of fabric would equal 8 bras.
I tend to draw around the whole bra pieces rather than the wings, then the cups etc… because it’s never even amounts You will however get a better fabric consumption if you cut out all the wings first then cups (or vice versa), so this allows for mistakes when sewing/cutting the lingerie, so I don’t order an extra 2-5% excess fabric if I was covering an order from a shop, and the reality is that most of the bras are made to order so I only get to cut one out a time mostly.
As well as working out how much one bra makes, I always work out how much 10 bras, 20 bras and 100 bras make.
In the next blog I shall be looking at taking the fabric consumptions and working out how to cost the bra (with all the trims and elastics etc).
Within this PDF pack is costing sheets if you would like to work out the quantity of fabric you need for bras.
If you would like a costing sheet that works out the cost and all your quantities for fabrics automatically for you then the computerised cost sheet is for you.
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