More swimsuit practice....

I also got to make another swimsuit for a five year old niece (or whatever relation the daughter of a cousin would be).  She's bigger than Grace but smaller than Leah so I was able to just adapt the pattern I used earlier to make one to fit her.  I've got the basic construction down pretty well by now so I used this as a chance to practice on the trickier parts of finishing the armholes, neckline, and the bottom hem.

I mustered up some courage and put a twin needle in the sewing machine.  That is a feature I wanted on my machine 'just in case' when I bought it a few years ago but I wasn't sure if I'd ever use it.  Now I can say I have.  It was pretty slick!  I love the neat and professional look it gives.  It took more than a little messing around to get the tension right for a curved seam on lycra fabric but I think it turned out alright.  I'll definitely use it again on sturdier things (ie cotton) because it was easy and gives perfect looking topstitching.

The second experiment was doing a lettuce/wavy edge on the bottom hem using the serger.  That involved swapping out regular thread for wooly nylon in the loopers and adjusting every possible dial and switch the serger has to offer.  Thats why I haven't tried it yet - so much time doing picky adjusting for one little seam.  But after lots of messing around I was happy with the results.  The pink wooly nylon thread worked well and blended in much better than the black thread I'm trying to use up.  The lettuce edge wasn't as wavy as I was thinking but its still cute.  Hopefully it looks wavy enough that it was intentional and not that I tried for a straight hem and did a terrible job!  :)

If and when I get a picture of the suit on the intended five year old I'll post it here.  Overall it was a good chance to practice sewing suits.  I took notes on all the different settings I used so it will hopefully get faster in the future.