Hugs for Your Jugs

I'm here with an actual tutorial for once so get your drafting stationery ready! It is my personal belief that a lot of us struggling bra makers should be increasing the spring on our bras, especially in larger wire sizes. Spring is, in short, the distance between the wire at rest and the cradle the wire fits into.    An extended edition of this post is available on  my ko-fi , which you can read with a one-time donation of $3/£2. You can subscribe to continue supporting my work and receive early access to/extended versions of my posts.   Using a spring-conscious approach has been the final puzzle piece in fitting bra bands onto myself and clients with high rates of success. What I mean by spring conscious is the understanding that each wire size/type/firmness needs a different amount of spring, as well as the understanding that certain cradle and band alterations also impact this amount. As designers often use a set amount of spring for each wire, their bands may ...

This is Part 3 of my Bra Physics series. In Part 1 , I described the forces involved in supporting your breasts and what parts of a bra are responsible for providing those forces. In Part 2 I introduced the concepts of stress and strain, and applied these and part 1's principles to the design and fit of bands. Now let's move on to the much maligned underwire (and the cradle). In the original Bra Physics post , I didn't talk much about the role of the underwire. The wires are a critical part of the "foundation" of a wired bra, as improper design or fit can cause pain and even injury, as well as reduce the support available in a bra. The underwire's main job is to resist the forces of the band, maintaining a cupped shape despite the bra being under high degrees of tension. Because the underwire is being pulled on by the band, we need to recap the stress and strain concepts discussed in Part 2 . Recap: Stress and Strain The strain of an item is essentially...