I haven't been sewing a whole lot lately. I've been spending my days outside working in the garden and hanging out with my little boys in the pool, going for walks and generally just enjoying life in the sunshine. However, the sewing I did do had me questioning all my life choices and contemplating throwing all my machines and fabric out the window and finding a new hobby...
All that is to say I sewed a swimsuit.
Now, I should probably preface this by saying the pattern seemed great. Well thought out, the instructions were good, the sizing seemed fine and there was all sorts of helpful info along the way. So I can only surmise that all difficulty lay squarely on my shoulders.
The swimsuit in question was the
X-Factor from 5 out of 4 Patterns. I should have bought the pattern for the RipTide bottoms too while I was at it, but noooooo. Why buy a pattern when you can hack one? Why indeed...
The pattern I used to hack was the Ohh Lulu Hilda Bike Shorts pattern that I got off of Craftsy a million years ago. (I can't seem to find a link that will work for them, but maybe you'll have better luck than I did.) I knew they fit well and that I could probably achieve a pretty close look to what I was after with a few simple changes. Oh reality you are cruel. They ended up being a bit more of a head scratcher than anticipated and after the saga of the swim top, I had hoped the bottoms would go together like a charm.
So. Let's get down to the nitty gritty for a bit. We'll start with the swim top and why I started questioning my life choices. The X-Factor uses about a million miles of binding to get a really nice finish along all the edges.
I thought I'd whip through it all with my cover stitch machine and have it done in no time at all. Clearly that did not happen. What did happen was a lot of frustration, a lot of seam ripping, more than just a few threads breaking and a whole heck of a lot of bad words being used. It also involved me thinking that maybe this sewing gig just wasn't for me as well as some serious contemplation on giving up, trashing the project and heading the store to buy a swimsuit. It was becoming very much a decision on which was the lesser of two evils. I can tell you wholeheartedly that bathing suit shopping rates right up there in the "things that I avoid at all costs" category normally so I think that is a pretty strong testament to how badly things were going.
I tried double sided tape. I used about a thousand clips. I went as slowly as I could, at some points just hand cranking the machine. Nothing I did seemed to matter. It was a gong show.
It's not that I haven't sewn swimwear before. I made my
Roxy Suit two summers ago and it was a great project. I have worn it to death (which is why I felt it high time to make a new suit) and it made me feel like a champion sewist. Although maybe I'm looking back through the haze of the rose coloured glasses that time away from a project provides. Re-reading my post about the Roxy, I did struggle with the bottoms quite a bit. But the X-Factor was almost my undoing. Although other than the binding it's not an overly challenging pattern and really, had my coverstitch played nicely, maybe it wouldn't have been challenging at all.
Because of all the frustrations I had, I kept putting my suit to the side and walking away from my sewing room. It was the only way to deal with it. So the top took far longer than I would have ever imagined. Eventually I finished though and moved on to sewing the bottoms, which in my mind were going to be so, so easy.
hahahahahahahahahahaha. I am a funny, funny lady. Of course they weren't. First off, my Hilda's don't have side seams, so I had to figure out how to do the channels for the side ties I wanted. Then there was a matter of length. They were way to long for swim bottoms as designed or at least far too long for the look I wanted for my swim bottoms. So I had to cut them down.
Then I wanted to add a waistband but I know with my figure a straight rectangular waist band is not going to work. So I planned to draft my own curved waistband. But, you know, why take five minutes to draft a waistband on your own when you can spend 45 minutes searching the internet for a pattern that might have the waistband style you want. Then realize 45 minutes into searching that you're a complete dolt and that you have access to a perfectly good curved waistband right in the sewing file on your computer.
There are days... Aggghhhhhhhh.
So, in the end I printed off the waistband pattern I had for a pair of leggings I've never made and it worked out brilliantly! I did end up sewing a channel at the top of the waistband for elastic, because they felt just a touch loose without and no one needs to have me jump into the water and lose them.
(Laugh all you want - but I've suffered that particular wardrobe malfunction with ready to wear bottoms a few years ago and that is a big huge, NO THANK YOU! All I can say is thank goodness I was in the privacy of my own backyard pool when it happened)
So a swimsuit that should have taken an afternoon or two took closer to two weeks to accomplish, but I did it! And hey! At least it's not winter yet like I feared it might be before I ever got it finished! LOL!
I am really happy with the result. It is a better fit than any ready to wear suit, it's the look I was wanting and it's so far stood the litmus test of actual swimming it it. It took a lot to get here, but it's a definite win.
I had planned to sew a second suit this summer, but you know what? I think I'll just leave it at the one and maybe next year give another pattern a go. I'm not sure my brain can handle sewing another one anytime soon...
