Sunday, March 16, 2014

Non-slip Push-up Bra

I don't know about other ladies, but I have always been a little saddened by the fact that I was forced to choose between attractive bras which made me look nice and full-coverage mom bras that kept my ladies in place while doing the day-to-day bending and lifting of taking care of the kids and doing crazy athletic things like tying my shoes. I would go to the store, try on a few styles and bend to touch my toes with the opposite hand while trying them on. If everything remained in the bra awesome; however, this very rarely happened. Nothing like jiggling your tits back in place fifty times a day to really make you hate the people who design bras.

Then I ran across an article in the April/May 2014 issue of Threads about a woman who had sewn a strip of material covered in silicone along the top back of her daughter's strapless prom dress to keep the dress from slipping. Inspiration struck! What if I tried sewing a ribbon along the top inside edge of my pretty new push-ups to keep the girls from sliding around when I bent over? Spoiler: It worked!

First I went to the local hardware store and picked up a tube of 100% silicone caulk. Heh, caulk. They had cute little tubes for almost twice the price of the regular construction-sized tube. So, I went ahead and bought way more than I needed. I had some lilac ribbon lying around that matched the two bras I just bought nicely.
 I eyeballed how much ribbon I would need and laid the strip out on a flat surface. Then I squeezed out a horribly uneven bead of silicone along the length of the ribbon, cause I have skill.
 Then you just flatten the bead out. I used my finger. The Threads article suggested using a damp finger. Water did nothing to keep the silicone from sticking to my finger, but I made it work. You could also probably use a popsicle stick or something else that's not your finger if you're not too lazy to go looking like I was.
 Once I was done piping and smearing I moved the ribbon somewhere it could dry overnight and got back to watching Netflix.
 The next morning the silicone was dry and it was time to cut and pin the ribbon. I just pinned it along the inside/upper edge of the cups on my bra and trimmed it to fit. Then I straight stitched it to the bra grabbing the top of the cup pad with the needle but not piecing through the cup.
 Sewn! I did go over the narrow ends of the ribbon with Fray Check once it was sewn to make sure it didn't get any ideas about unraveling.

Cute bra + silicone non-slip strip, check. Now the real question is did it work?

YES!!!!!

I put this bra on and did my changing room toe touching test, no slippage. I went around the room and picked up the kids' toys, no slippage. I bent over as far as I could and practically had to be upside-down before gravity overcame the grabbing power of the silicone! I jumped up and down (literally) for joy, they also remained in place for that. 

I waited until I had worn and machine-washed both bras before posting this because who wants to hand wash your bras? They made it through just fine. I did not put them in the drier because I always hang my bras to dry anyway.

The only complaint I had was that when I decided to do my elliptical workout without changing my bra there was some rubbing in the middle where the ribbon pieces ended. This could be fixed by folding over the ends, encasing the ends in another bit of fabric/ribbon, or just not being too lazy to change bras before working out. Seriously, what was I thinking? Who works out in a push-up? Duh.

Hope this helps some other ladies modify their bras to accommodate more of the everyday tasks they strangely aren't designed to handle.

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