Hugs for Your Jugs

Bra making has taken a very modular turn in the past few years: to make a well fitting bra, you must: Take a root trace (while leaning forwards) Match this to a wire chart and order some similar wires Make a fitting band to fit your wire and band Add the cups and fit those This system works well for some, but there are some pitfalls that are very easy to get muddled in when approaching bra making like this. Beginners especially can sometimes be lost in endless alterations, a lack of lift, and perpetually uncomfortable bras. These issues stem largely from the ideas that: The best fitting wire is one that matches your root width perfectly The wire must fit close to perfectly for the bra to fit well A perfectly taken root trace (again, taken leaning forwards) will show your breast root perfectly The fit of the wire can - and should - be determined without adding the cups, to avoid tissue being pushed out by too small cups  The cups can then be easily altered to fit with this new f...

In the online bra making community omega is a popular term, and many people (esp. in larger cup sizes) consider themselves to have an omega breast shape. Omega is a term that popular instructor Beverly Johnson claims to have coined, and she explains what she means by it in this post . Her definition (and conceptualisation) of omega has been adopted by the community as a whole, however I have always had an issue with it: in my opinion, omega conflates two different breast shapes, leading to confusion amongst bra makers.    One of these shapes is omega, but both require an Omega Adjustment?

With the recent advent of increasing discussion on center fullness and outer fullness - including a gore alteration that increases center depth , and more and more people being confused as to what it all means, I thought I'd try and explain what these shapes are and why so many people struggle to figure out which they have. Fullness on top and bottom (or "vertical fullness distribution" as I like to pretentiously say) has been a staple of English-speaking bra fitting forums for years, but  horizontal  fullness distribution has only ever really been mentioned since about 2015, starting off with this amazing blog post by Brastic Measures. I'm noting now that as with top and bottom fullness, horizontal fullness is a spectrum. You can be extremely outer full, even, or extremely center full - or anything in between. Center fullness and outer fullness can both be mistaken for a splayed shape. Yup, two polar opposites can and are both mistaken for a third, unrelated,...