At the start of summer the suits we had in the drawer all looked good and fit fine so I decided that last year's suits would be fine for this year as well. Fast forward through two sessions of 10 swimming lessons each, plus going to the pool at least once a week and those same suits look pretty pitiful right now. Grace's is completely stretched out and tent-ish looking because that kid cannot resist pulling dresses over her bent knees when she's chilly. So, sitting on the side of the pool waiting her turn in swimming lessons, she tucks her knees under the dress of her suit to 'keep warm'. Twenty swim lessons later the dress portion of her suit looks like it could hold an elephant! All that chlorine really does a number on the fabric too - its getting quite pilly and thin. Leah has grown a lot this year and rotates between her purple Olympic swimmer wanna-be suit and some garage sale suits that are almost threadbare. As I don't have anything particularly pressing to make at the moment I decided to make new suits. I'll think of it as getting ahead for next year!
I love my self-patterned modest dress-style suits (here, here, here, and here), but also wanted to try my hand at a tank suit one of these days. I have a KwikSew pattern I picked up on sale and have never used so I thought I'd test it out. First I made a mock-up to check for sizing and modesty standards. My string bean, tall-and-thin girls usually need things lengthened around the waist/chest and this was no different. I ended up using the KwikSew x-small size and just adding length to the torso for each girl. I lowered the arch on the front and back leg holes to keep their little buns tucked in properly. Those drafting changes went smoothly. I also raised the neckline a bit, which ended up causing me a bit of grief. I made the racerback style, and raising the neckline meant that the 'head hole' got smaller. We had to do some contortionist moves to get arms and shoulders through the too-tight head hole until I did a round of alterations. It was a bummer, but after the alterations I've saved them so they are wearable. It annoys me that I had to hack at them and mess up my nice seams/finished but I guess I'd rather have less than perfect finished edges than start over and waste the suits entirely.
Overall, the suits came together very quickly. I put a ruffle on the front of each for fun. The girls LOVED the frills so I'm glad I took the extra few minutes to add ruffles. I used 4 way stretch swimsuit lycra from my stash. (I bought the lycra more than a year ago - that makes it 'free' now, right?) I used a double layer for all the parts of the suit - one layer just seemed too thin.
Here is suit number one:
This one is suit number two.
I love it when chests are well covered and buns are well tucked in. :)
I did the straps differently on the second suit, after discovering the too-small-head-hole problem on the first one. I was hoping this would fix the problem but it wasn't enough of a change.
To alter the head-holes at the very end, I ended up trimming the straps so they were thinner, cutting the 'V' in the racerback deeper, and rebinding the front necklines to lower them about a half an inch. Those three little trimmings made the hole big enough that its not quite so difficult to get the suits on. Not easy, mind you, but not quite as difficult as the first go-round.
Before:
After:
Before:
After:
As long as I had all the lycra out and my sewing machine all set up for stretch stitching I decided to whip up two dress styles as well. I've made these so many times it only takes about an hour per suit, start to finish.
Now the girls have two suits each for this winter and next year. I hope the lycra holds out on the tank style suits - I'm a little disappointed in how they are pilling/fraying after only two trips to the pool in them so I don't have high hopes. I'll have to keep an eye out for some higher quality lycra - its so hard to find in stores.
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