Grading a 3 piece cup – Part 2

I really thought this would be an easy process for grading a single bust diameter into different bands. Boy was I mistaken. Because its 3 pieces and not 2, I couldn’t even really refer to my book, except for how much the circumference of the cup changes.

I have now officially spend 7 hours on this today! And I found a little mistake from yesterday’s grading, but it was only in the notch placement on the top cup. The walking and walking and measuring and measuring is about to drive me mad.

My only fear at this point is sewing one of each size. I am planning to create a full range of sizes from 28A through 50something. I figure I’ll make up to what I have underwires for. If I have a need for larger sizes, I’ll have to have some new underwires made.

I am seriously exhausted, but in the mean time I spent 5 minute breaks throughout the day setting up my new computer. Oh yeah, I got a new computer.

Its a touch screen one, but I am still having trouble figuring it out. I’m just opting right now to use the touchpad. And don’t get me started on Windows 8. All I can say “What the hell were they thinking?”

Luckily I was able to get my student/teacher version of CS4 running on the new computer even though I had installed one of the programs previously on my other laptop. Maybe it reported to Adobe that I uninstalled it from the other laptop. Lets hope. I loaded the program and it accepted my key code, so I’m crossing my fingers for no issues.

Anyway, here are images of what I did today with my illustrator grade rules.

Grading the 3 piece cup

I have spent the better part of 2 full days figuring out the grading for my 3 piece bra cup. I graded one band size for 4 cup sizes by hand last week. I spend most of yesterday determining that my measurements were not exact enough. I finished yesterday thinking I had corrected everything.

I had walked the interior seams of the cup and they all matched after many many changes. I realized when I left work that I had neglected the walk the outer seams with the band. Duh! Well, that took another 8 hours today. I am finally satisfied with my grade “rules” that I will begin grading other band sizes this week.

This is what my final graded 36 band looks like. If you can figure it out, go right ahead and be my guest to use my grade rules. I graded everything in Illustrator so I can make pdf patterns to print for classes.

I had started to write grading directions for this cup, but after the last 16 hours spent on this, someone would have to pay me lots of money to do that, or I would have to have a ridiculous amount of free time.

I don’t think either are happening anytime soon so here you go.