Warm weather and sewing with lycra... It would have been weird if I hadn't thought about swimwear last week. And sure I did. I've been thinking about making a new 1950's style bathing suit but I decided to make something more practical first: A sporty type of bikini top to go with my existing set. It's something I already blogged about a year ago.
I'm not much of a beach or pool person but if I go near one of those things, I like to be able to swim. I didn't miss a practical swimsuit in the past year but I know I would on my next holiday or if I decided to go to the beach after all...
This new top is a simple racerback style, drafted from a dartless bodysuit block. It's basically shaped like a sport bra although it doesn't compress the chest quite as much (I wanted that. It's not like I'll be doing heavy exercise in this thing and this way it doesn't completely flatten my breasts).
If I make a top like this again, I would make the racerback piece a bit narrower at center back. It works well like this, but it would look better if it were narrower.
Now, I have a practical bikini. I may go on to make the pretty one as well but for now, I'm returning to my 1930's dress plan.
For most of the year, I don't even think about swimwear. I'm not a regular swimmer and I prefer the beach for long walks on windy autumn days... But a bikini would come handy for my (late) summer holiday.
So, I decided to leave the wacky world of underwiring for now (no doubt I will return there later) and concentrate on making something (relatively) quick and wearable. I had some nice quality black lycra in my stash (bought for my retro swim suit but there was plenty left) and bought more new elastic. The lycra actually matched my old H&M hipster bikini bottom, so if all else failed, I'd be fine if I just made one OK top.
I planned on making a very simple longline bandeau top (a.k.a. a boob tube) to match the old hipster, and a high-waisted bikini bottom with a gathered bandeau top. The longer top and the bottom were drafted based on my lingerie slopers and for the last piece, I used this tutorial from pattern school. I really recommend that site: lots and lots of information about 'close-fit stretch-wear patterns' i.e. swim, dance and exercise wear. Just no real sewing instructions, so only easy to use if you sort of know what you're doing. My bikini top was drafted completely according to the instructions for the gathered bandeau, just with a smaller hole at center front and with the strap knotted at the top of the bandeau.
I'm very happy to report that this time, it all worked out.
I even had the audacity to try that blind finish again on the high waisted briefs and the gathered top. This time, I found a better lining, calculated the turn of the cloth better and it worked like a charm.
Here you can see the top edges of the longline bandeau, with a conventional finish.
And here are the top edges of the gathered bandeau, smooth on the outside and with the seam and a zigzag on the inside.
You may notice some waving in the elastic (especially in the top picture). Although with the tops flat on the table, this may look like a problem, it is a solution. This stuff, Gold-Zack 1 cm wide transparant elastic, was the only thing remotely like swimwear elastic I could find. It looks the part but I found out in my attempts with the grey bikini just how sturdy this stuff is... So I decided to stretch it slightly less than the lycra to prevent uncomfortable and unsightly cutting.
By now, you may wonder what these bikini's actually look like... Well, here we go:
RTW bottoms, longer top.
High waisted bottoms, gathered top (by the way, this thing is surprisingly supportive)
Don't worry, it's not the twisty top pattern I'm talking about. In fact, I've made good progress on that over the weekend. All I need to do now is make it again in order to take step-by-step pictures for the instructions. And write those instructions, of course. In fact, I planned to do that today but I got distracted by another project...
At some moment last week, I decided to make a bikini. I had fixed the little issue with the bust gathers on last year's retro swim suit and that made me realize two things: 1. with my serger and this sewing machine, sewing lycra is not something to be afraid of at all (I did a lingerie workshop with my old sewing machine, the jersey-eating maniac with feeding dog issues and that memory really stuck with me) and 2. I love that bathing suit, but in some cases, a bikini is just more practical/nicer.
I threw out my many years old RTW bikini in early June. The top had lost a lot of colour and it never fit properly in the first place. I looked for bikinis in the shops but although they were cheap and plentiful, I returned empty-handed both times. The problem there were the bikini bottoms... Apperantly, fashion dictates those should be very, very low indeed. Of course, I could look in a wider variaty of stores, but stores which sell bottoms which are eh... more revealing generally don't acknowledge my bust size...
So, with realisation 1 in mind, why not make my own? I even had some jersey in my stash.
I decided on a lovely deep grey lycra which I bought at Kantje Boord during the November blogger meeting. It was just an off-cut but it should be just enough for a bikini.
And then, things got tricky. Of course, I wanted to draft my own pattern. I didn't those lingerie classes for no reason. In itself, that's fine. It's how I do all my sewing. I just knew I had to check the cup-size which was too small in my first bra. Then, I found I had already drafted a larger one for my bathing suit (which has stretchy material for the cups...), so I thought I might as well go with that.
My design was for simple, fairly high-waisted bottoms and an underwired bra-style top with an interesting tied front. And I decided to try and incorporate a detail from RTW:
This year, the design of my favorite bra (H&M's 'our perfect racerback', in case you're wondering) changed from this, elastic applied in two passes,
to this this, lining with elastic serged to the inside which provides a very nice topstitching-free look at the outside.
This was a bit of a nightmare. Good cup-size or not, I could have finished this bikini three times oven by now if I had just done it the normal way. Even the bottoms took me the better part of a day to finish (the only lining I had for those was more stretchy that the lycra, which caused all kinds of problems) and that sorry little thing in the picture at the start of this post, that's what the top looks like now... Ok, it's only half of it but still...
There isn't a single section of this project which I didn't unpick at some point. In some cases the material let me down, like the stretchy lining or the overly firm new elastic. I other cases I just hadn't thought it out far enough. Usually, I can envision the order of construction of any given project even before I draft it but in this case it was a realy learning curve. I should be frustrated (and I probably will be if I don't end up with a wearable result) but I'm still loving the challenge.
