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About the Author
Beverly Johnson started teaching bra-making in 1995 after making her own dance costumes and figure skating costumes for many years. 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 having top quality supplies to sell; 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 in one issue that Bra-makers Supply existed, and mentioned we were in Canada! Business exploded! Soon we had stores calling us to have bra-making classes, and Beverly started a five-year love-affair with her HUGE suitcase, as she travelled all over Canada and the United States teaching women everywhere to make their own bras. The suitcase was big enough that Beverly could have travelled in it herself! Over the years, Beverly tweaked and modified her original pattern. Now using Version 8 of that pattern, and each version addresses specific fitting issues and makes the pattern that much better.

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 was not built to last. Just try lifting a suitcase full of underwires, class notes and fabrics! Demands for teaching were still coming in! What to do? In a stroke of pure genius that only sleep deprivation can induce, Beverly decided to train women to become her Certified Instructors, and they would use her pattern and teach her method of bra-making wherever they were needed. Now there are almost 50 Certified Teachers in almost every province of Canada, and some in the United States.

Bra-makers Supply had moved from Beverly’s basement moved to a small Markham warehouse in January 1999, and 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 we were cramped for space ...again! Johnson 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 proved to be very popular. It made sense in 2003, that Beverly move yet again to Hamilton, a city where she could see the advantages of having one central warehouse and call centre, as well as a classroom where she could teach both the Certified Teacher Program and the Professional made-to-Measure Program.

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, and most of the book was written inside airports across Canada, and on flights to Hawaii. 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 a lot easier.

Start to finish, the book took over 6 years to produce! Also in 2005,the new,Bra-makers building at 1104 Fennell Avenue East suite 219, has both a beautiful well-lit and spacious classroom; and a large stockroom area. To complete the whole picture, Linda Crawford , the friendly “voice”of Bra-makers. She processes orders and answers any questions you may have. Linda speaks “bra” and if she doesn’t know the answer to your question, she will find out and respond to you as quickly as possible. Beverly's little company has grown over the past 9 years from a one-page list of supplies to a 20 page catalogue of remarkable goodies. Large enough to handle all your bra-making needs, but never so large that we don’t remember where we came from, and the women who helped us get there.