My Sewing Space

My daughter has a birthday party to go to on Sunday afternoon.  She's soooo excited.  A birthday party is always great, but the excitement is compounded by the fact that this is a swimming party at the local recreational complex.  That's all fine and good except that my daughter's swimming suit from this past summer was really tired.  The elastic wasn't elastic anymore and it didn't cover her up as well as it should have.  So, a new one was in order. I've never sewn swimwear before, but I wasn't optimistic about being able to find a RTW one to buy, so now was as good of a time as any to try it out.  Fabricland still had some swimwear fabric and I found one that would meet with my daughter's approval. I used Kwik Sew 2605 .  It included good instructions for sewing swimwear and good measurements for sizing. I started with a size 4, lengthened it about 0.75", and took 0.25" off of each side seam (front and back) at the underarm...

I love the fit of this top. I’ve made it before with short, puff sleeves for summer. So, other than the sleeves, I had this all traced off and ready to go. From absolute start (pulling the fabric out of a box) to finish, this took less than four hours. I did change the back a bit. The pattern piece for the back is scooped out at the neck and has two ties. I wasn’t so sure about that, so I just raised the back neckline to a height I thought looked reasonable. The fabric is really stretchy and rather slippery. I was pretty frustrated with it at a couple of points in the process. The neckline was troublesome. But, the 4-way stretch makes it comfortable to wear. However, it won’t be warm. I think I’ll probably wear this with a sweater over it. Covering up a few of the dots might not be so bad. The twist on the front of the top looks more complicated than it is. The picture above is what it looks like before assembly. The short part on the upper right is the shoulder seam, the...