Strap in, it's gonna be a tough ride.

So, this is Haruhi's top. This image has the ruffles going up the sides of the black in the front, but usually it's just a solid line across the bottom--that's what I'm doing too.

First thing I did was get a strapless bra to base the top on. This was a Le Mystere brand "Shameless" bra in nude. It had a thin layer of nude spandex on top that I caaarefully cut away to reveal the underneath. Then I stuck guidelines on it with quilter's tape to help me get things even...this was mostly useful for straps and such.



You'll see I already added the straps on. Haruhi had two sets, one slightly longer than the other. I originally made the longer ones an inch longer, but .5" is probably better so that they don't just slide off your shoulder constantly.



Note that the straps are racerback in the front (more toward the center line of back than straight down.) This means you can't just stick straps where the strapless bra wants them. This is good, because that shit's almost always uncomfortable & gave me weird armpit pooches. BAD.



You can kinda see in that picture that where I have pinned the strap in the front there is a mark. That mark came from making a strap out of muslin and pinning it places in the front until it looked right. You can also see a small nude seam slightly further right which is where the strap originally went.



See how much sexier the racerback straps look, even just pinned like that? MmMMm. Make sure to get them even, and take the back of the bra into consideration--which hook are you using? Try to maintain as much stretch there as possible, you don't want it to pull on itself or get stiff. I did an up-down seam instead of left-right for that reason.

You can wait and sew in the straps after you do a lot of other things, just try not to stab yourself with the pins too many times. (Like I inevitably did.)

As for how to make the straps--I figured out the length and thought that I wanted them to be 1" wide at the ends and 1.5" at the middle, for extra sexy and because I like pain. I did a rolled edge hem like I did on the bottom of the skirt, but it was a lot harder and didn't turn out as nice. I'm not sure if rolled hem just requires more fabric, or what I did wrong. So be careful. I tried to go back and make double-sided straps, but sewing shiny/slick to shiny/slick was...unsuccessful, shall we say. You can also probably just use ribbon and sew the ends together, but I wanted some stretch to hold up, y'know, my bits.

Next up, pattern-making. If only we were shaped like tubes.
~Raiphin