So at the start of the year when I was thinking about new things I'd like to try sewing in 2016, the one thing I said I definitely wanted to do was to make a swimsuit. Swimsuits are the absolute worst thing to shop for, for me; worse than jeans, worse than bras, worse than all of it. There are so many things that can be wrong with a swimsuit, and usually if one of them is wrong then all of them are, and I come out of changing rooms feeling demoralised about holidays and my body and the concept of being seen. If I could make my own, everything would be so much better. I was going to make one over the summer, which seemed appropriate, but then the whole house move drama happened and I never got around to it. When we booked our holiday I revised my goal, but kept putting it off due to scarcity of all the necessary bits and eventually finished it about nine hours before we were due to leave for the airport. Oops.
My original plan was to make a Bombshell, but I eventually came to the conclusion that I'd prefer a bikini. During the course of my life I've had one-piece swimming costumes that I was OK with, but bikinis have always been wrong. Once I had a bikini top I really liked, but the bottoms were super low rise and I ended up wearing shorts over them unless I absolutely had to have my ass in the water. So when I saw a half-price Simplicity pattern while browsing through a sale at 12.30 am, I bought it and made plans to get to work.
So this is me standing in our pool. The hotel's gimmick was to have an open wall in every suite with a pool at the edge overlooking the Pitons. I loved it SO MUCH.
Mistake number one: I looked at the bust size and just cut the one that corresponded to my bust measurement, reasoning that since there wasn't any shoulder fitting to worry about, it should be fine. What then happened, obviously, was that when I tried my first attempt on, the entire band was swallowed up by the underside of my boobs and it looked really weird. I tried to graft on a separate band and it looked even weirder. I decided the day before my holiday to start the top all over again. I was expecting it to be a bit amateur, but not quite that amateur.
Based on the first attempt, I downsized the top by two sizes, did an FBA on the cups, and shortened all the pieces of elastic except the one ruching the front piece. I tried on Bikini Top Mark II and didn't really like that either. It looked less amateur but more frumpy. I spent a couple of minutes messing about with it in the mirror and eventually decided to sew the top edge to the midpoint along the ruching in the middle. Having done that I found the whole thing a LOT more tolerable.
I thought the elastic guides provided by the pattern were way off. They seemed to be more or less the same length as the piece they were to fit, which is very much not the point of elastic. After trying to bodge close my first extremely gapey top, I cut three inches off the piece for the waistband bottoms and six off the pieces for the legs (a quick try on of the bottoms pre-elastic insertion revealed a LOT of excess fabric round the bum).
Shortening the elastic made for a better fit on the bottoms, but I felt a bit duped by the illustrations. It gives the impression of a ruched band at the top, when the whole thing is actually one piece ruched at the sides. The fabric doesn't stay ruched at the top/smooth at the crotch, so what quite often happens without continual readjustment is a pair of oddly saggy-looking bottoms. And nobody wants a saggy bottom.
I have every intention of making more swimwear in the future. Much as this was kind of a pain, it was still notably less awful than trying on bikinis. I probably won't be using this pattern again - I still really like the idea, but the illustration is misleading and I'm not sure I'll ever be able to make something that looks like that from this pattern. I'll be on the lookout for another one for next summer, though. Possibly something with actual cup sizes.
Yes, I know I'm not Eva Herzigova, but I've got as much right as anyone to give it a try, OK?
Ugh, this holiday, you guys. I genuinely don't know how anything is going to top this ever.
<3
When your website or blog goes live for the first time, it is exciting. That is until you realize no one but you and your. swimwear
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