The Bra Makers Manuals By Beverly Johnson were written as textbooks for the home sewist as well as those involved in custom bra-making.

Even if you have never sewn a bra for anyone else, you will thoroughly enjoy making your own well-fitting and supportive bras. Now you can have bras in all of the fashionable fabrics and colours, in styles that rival ready-to-wear – at a fraction of the cost.

It doesn’t matter what size you are, you will be able to make your own custom fitting bra.

The Manuals are conveniently coil bound, making it easy to open on your sewing table.

There are two volumes of the manual – The Bra Makers Manual Volume 1 and The Bra Makers Manual Volume 2. Each of the manuals cover differing depths of information and areas, for the sewist to become familiar with.

All technical drawings created by Beverly Johnson, The Fairy Bra Mother.

Happy sewing!

Beverly Johnson started teaching bra-making in 1995, after many years of making her own dance costumes and figure skating costumes. But she was a teacher long before that. Beverly taught high school Home Economics in the early 70s, then taught adult sewing, quilting and interior design for the next 25 years! She travelled all over the world to teach sewing techniques.

When she started teaching, the lack of well-fitting commercial bra patterns and good quality supplies became glaringly apparent; and so, she made a double-sided decision. One – she determined to engineer a bra pattern for her students, one that would encompass all the unique sizes of the women she met. Two – she was adamant about only selling top quality supplies; supplies that were readily available to the bra-making industry, but not to the fabric stores or the home sewist.

Bra-makers Supply put out its first one-page catalogue in 1997. Like many other woman-owned and operated businesses begin, Bra-makers Supply started in the basement of Beverly’s home. Then, Threads magazine mentioned Bra-Makers Supply in one issue, also mentioning that Bra-Makers Supply was located in Canada! This caused business to explode! Soon stores were calling wanting bra-making classes. This began Beverly’s love-affair with her HUGE suitcase, as she travelled all over the world teaching women to sew bras. The suitcase was big enough that Beverly could have travelled in it herself!

At the same time, the stores were asking where they could buy the supplies they wanted for their customers. Bra-makers Wholesale was born and now services over 200 retail locations, keeping them supplied with the same top-quality goods that Beverly’s students had come to enjoy.

The 70-pound suitcase, however, was not built to last.  Just try lifting a suitcase full of underwires, class notes and fabrics! With ever increasing demand for teaching, what was Beverly to do? In a stroke of pure genius that only sleep deprivation can induce, Beverly decided to train women to become Instructors using her Universal Fit Method and patterns. Now her methods and patterns are all over the world!

Bra-makers Supply moved from Beverly’s basement to a small Markham warehouse in January 1999. The order desk was manned (or should we say “wo-manned”) for over 6 years by the crew there. The stock kept growing and growing until they were out of space …again!

Beverly had the idea that women who enjoyed sewing their own well-fitting and supportive bras might want to make a career out of sewing bras for other women. The Professional made-to-Measure Bra-making Program was first taught under the umbrella of Mohawk College (Hamilton, Ontario, Canada), and has proven to be very popular. It made sense in 2003, that Beverly move yet again, to Hamilton. She decided that this was the place to have a store and internet order centre,  as well as a classroom where she could teach courses for all levels of bra-making, swimwear and corsetry.

The final piece of the puzzle was the completion and publication of Beverly’s book The Bra-makers Manual,  in December 2005. We know you are going to ask when she had time to write such a book, and the answer should be obvious – a lot of Beverly’s time travelling was spent on airplanes. Most of the book was written inside airports across Canada and on flights overseas. The drawings were done by hand until she discovered how well computers could handle all 760 technical drawings in the book – that certainly made life easier. Start to finish, the book took over 6 years to produce!

In 2010, they moved to their own space in the heart of the fabric district on Ottawa Street. It has both a beautiful well-lit and spacious classroom; and  a large stockroom area. This is now where Bra-makers calls home – 308 Ottawa Street.  To complete the whole picture is a team of highly qualified ladies, mentored by Beverly, bringing the friendly “voice”of Bra-makers.  They all process orders and answer any questions you may have.

Beverly’s little company has grown over the past 20 years from a one-page list of supplies to a 4000 square foot store filled with remarkable goodies.  Large enough to handle all your bra-making needs, but never so large that we forget where we came from and the women who helped us get there.