Bra Month | Busty Pattern Review | Porcelynne Eve Bra

I want to tell you about my absolute favorite bra pattern today.

Are you ready?!

It’s the Porcelynne Eve, and it is, in my opinion, the gold standard in wired bra patterns.

Most bra patterns take into consideration two things: the cup and the underbust. But this doesn’t capture the beautiful diversity in people’s bodies – that we can have wide roots or narrow roots; that we can have V-shaped torsos or barrel-shaped torsos; that we can have close-set or wide-set breasts.

The Porcelynne Eve takes all of that into consideration.

You see, the Eve is a modular bra pattern, meaning the band and cup patterns are sold separately. Why? Because it allows you to get a more custom fit, without a ton of alterations to the pattern. Here’s how it goes:

1. First, you choose your wire (using a breast root trace, like we talked about recently!), then you get the band pattern that corresponds with your best wire shape

2. Next, you make a fitting band. We’ll be talking more about this later this month! This helps you make sure you’ve chosen the best wire size.

3. Once you’re sure your band and wire fit properly, you purchase the cup pattern that corresponds with your wire size. You sew up the cup, baste it into your fitting band, and check for fit again!

4. Finally, you make a final bra that’s custom fit for you!

You can see all the modular patterns here!

The band pattern includes bands for different torso shapes. So, for example, there’s a different band pattern for me, with my 5″ difference between upper bust and underbust, than there is for my friend, who might have a 1″ difference between upper and underbust.

The instructions, which Porcelynne has very generously made available on their blog, even go through common alterations, such as narrowing or widening the bridge, fine-tuning the torso shape adjustment, and dealing with breast asymmetry.

For me, the modular pattern makes a huge difference. I mentioned on the bra pattern roundup that I couldn’t get the Pin Up Girls Classic to work for me, because it was going to need a ton of alterations to fit my narrow roots? Not so with the Eve. I barely had to alter the pattern at all. I followed the instructions for a slight torso shape adjustment and widened the bridge a smidge, and that was it. And both of those are super easy adjustments to make – nothing like altering the whole cup for a smaller wire.

Now, I want to make this clear: I think the Eve is the gold standard in bra patterns. (And no, no one is paying me to say that; I recently became a Porcelynne affiliate, but I had been singing this pattern’s praises long before I even knew that was an option! The affiliate program just helps me pay for the maintenance of Sew Busty 🙂)

But there is one thing I don’t like about the pattern: the size calculator. For me, the size calculator put me in a size 4 cup. (The Eve uses numbers for cup sizes, so they don’t directly correspond to ready-to-wear sizing.) If it wasn’t totally sheer, I’d show you the results of my size 4 trial … it was MAJOR QUAD BOOB.

I ended up with a size 14 cup. Now, that sounds like a lot of cup sizes, and it is. But I do want to mention that the Eve’s cups are all a ready-to-wear half cup bigger than each other. In other words, a size 14 cup is really only 5 cup sizes – not 10 – bigger than a 4. But still.

So my advice is to ignore the size calculator when it comes to choosing your cup size, and instead check your horizontal hemisphere measurement against the cross-cup measurement chart that’s included at the end of the instruction booklet. (Don’t know about the horizontal hemisphere measurement? Check out our guide to bra making measurements here!)

My horizontal hemisphere is about 12″ (12.5″ if I measure leaning forward). The cross-cup measurement of the size 14 cup for the 42 vertical wire (my wire size) is 11-7/8″, so wayyyyy closer to my actual breast measurement than the 10-1/32″ cross-cup measurement of the size 4 cup for the same wire. I’m sure the calculator works for some people (I’ve heard, for example, that it works great for those with shallower projection!)

So, basically, I’d recommend doing your first toile using the cup that most closely corresponds to your HH, not the one the calculator suggests. (But use the calculator to figure out what torso shape to use for your band and what torso adjustments you might need!)

Overall, the Eve is absolutely the best bra pattern ever, in my humble opinion. It’s the closest to a custom draft that you’re going to get without either paying hundreds of dollars or spending hundreds of hours.

I’ve made this bra now a bunch of times, and have even made it into a sloper from which I made a vertical-seamed bra!

Also, I just want to show you the difference between the fit of a t-shirt while wearing my old, too-wide-at-the-root, ready-to-wear bra, and the fit of a t-shirt in my Porcelynne Eve. These pics were taken the SAME DAY.

What do you think? Are you curious to try this pattern?

^Some of the links in this post are affiliate links. This means if you click on the link and purchase the item, I will receive an affiliate commission at no extra cost to you. All opinions remain my own.