Enormously long post about swimsuits and life

Hi folks.

A friend of mine from my sewing world has put me in touch with a book called Designing your life. To boil it down to its essence the idea is that rather than working towards the one right thing for you, and being dismayed when something doesn't work out, you should work with the idea of prototypes, build a trial model and if it works move forward, and if it doesn't learn what you can and then toss that one aside, no hard feelings.

To translate this - think of your life as a series of muslins. Test garments that may help you refine the fit or might alert you to a dud pattern before you ruin the good fabric.

Think about this.

Who beats themselves up because the muslin wasn't wearable? Don't most of us accept that it is part of the process?

Imagine if you thought of your life in terms of muslins. That degree you never used when you should have studied something else. That dumb relationship that used up years of your life. The dead end job you stayed in too long.

What if you just shrugged and figured, well that's was just a muslin. I could never have figured it out if I hadn't made that one first? That's how I got it right.

Fairly liberating and helps remove the fear of trying new things, because you accept that not everything will work out, and you don't get a good fit without a few trials.

The idea of sew-alongs has been like that for me.

I had this idea that because I was doing a lot of one thing that it would be logical to organize my thoughts around a garment type. Other people call these sew-alongs so I did too.

The thing is that this sort of thing doesn't suit my random style or my hard to schedule life.

I write flypaper thoughts I realize because I have a flypaper mind with highly random sewing ideas fitting themselves into the rest of living.

So with that said I have decided to write a big honest post with all my thoughts on swimwear and if any of you have any questions please leave them in the comments. I will see what I can do to fill in any blanks.

Does this make sense?

The thing is that swimwear and water have been in my mind all week.

Do you have time for a dream I had that has been haunting me?

Sort of connects a lot of things.

Well this is was my dream three nights ago.

I was standing on the bank of a river watching a herd ? of golden retrievers swim down it with the current. (I know golden retrievers, I never said my dreams were heavy).

Any way they were all doing well and everyone was happy until I noticed one dog under the water. My heart stopped and I looked closer.

What had happened was this one dog had put its four feet down and touched bottom. If you have ever swum in unfamiliar waters you would know the feeling of how good it feels to touch bottom and I guess this dog felt like that.

The problem was that by touching bottom this dog had its head about a foot below the surface of the water, which of course survival-wise would be a problem.

There I was on the bank shouting at this dog saying - it's OK just let go and kick up and you will be able to breathe and move ahead and be safe. But of course I knew that the surface of the water was only a little way up and the dog couldn't know that.

What the dog knew was that the bottom was familiar and felt safe.

Well you don't need a Phd in psychology to figure this out but when I woke up, in a panic, I started to wonder about how many of us keep reaching to feel bottom.

I told my husband about this dream right away and he said "Why are all your dreams about dogs? Mine are about cars."

That is an actual quote. This is what I deal with.

So on the subject of moving water let's talk about swimsuits.

The last we left it we were talking about lining.

To my mind there is only one way to attach a lining and that is to zig zag most pieces, back lining excepted, to the main body fabric with a medium zig zag. To make everything look very pretty try to let the swing of the needle go just off the edge of the fabric. This will make a sort of vague scallop edge finish. Here is how I pinned the lining to the inside of the Fabric Crush maternity suit before I stitched it in place:

Here is what that stitching looks like:

I always do this basting with a zig zag instead of a long straight stitch. The reason for this is that the zig zag is stretchy and you will be leaving these stitches in. If you use straight stitches they are inevitably and harmlessly going to pop when you move and that will cause you to panic. Always a good policy to avoid that if you can.

For the same reason I now use a stretch thread like Euroflex in the bobbin (wind the bobbin slowly so it doesn't stretch out in the winding) and a poly thread in the upper threading. Euroflex is great in bobbins but can be a bit too stiff for the upper threading in some machines. Of course you don't have to do this, any poly thread is fine for basting.

At this point you can do a baste fitting if you want of all your pieces but for that I would use a long straight stitch and take it out.

Now a word on why I think the underlining option above is the best way to go.

1. It makes construction so much easier. The First Crush swimsuit by Rad Patterns has highly complex instructions for sort of bagging the lining so all the seams are enclosed, that I spent an entire lunch hour trying to understand before throwing in the towel and saying a small prayer for any new sewers trying to make their first swimsuit with these directions. I just wouldn't do it that way. First it would make your head hurt and take 500% longer to sew that swimsuit up, and secondly although the seams would be covered the lining wouldn't be attached to the internal seams and therefore would be likely to spin around when wearing.

2. All my old Lands End suits are made this way and they wore well and felt right.

Now I suggest that you leave this attaching the lining stage off from the back piece.

Why?

The reason is that the crotch seam is one you would like to have enclosed so for that one seam sandwich the front with lining attached between the back fabric piece and the lining piece, stitch that crotch seam then flip the lining up and then baste the lining to the back piece.

Here are pictures of that done with some clear how-to shots grabbed from a Jalie tutorial:

 Once all the lining pieces have been attached you can proceed to the construction treating all pieces as one:

A word here about cups.

For the blue and white pattern (fabric and lining from Halo Fabric Addicts) maternity swimsuit above my DIL wanted a soft cup, which makes sense when shapes are changing. Fortunately the cross over front of this pattern had a piece on the inside that make this easy:

 I simply put a slightly stretched piece of fold over elastic along the bottom of this piece which of course was eventually attached to the side seams. Here is a shot of the inside of the soft bra piece form the lining side:

And here is a shot of the interior of the suit with the lining hidden under a swimsuit fabric layer for this piece, useful so there is no show through of lining along the neckline from the right side:

For my own yellow parrot suit I laid some salvaged from an old bra cups on the lining, stitched around the cups and then cut away the excess lining from underneath them:

More professionally for my daughter's beautiful retro suit made from this pattern  I followed the instructions and had two layers of lining in the cups, one with the top nicked off and left free to insert the proper swimsuit cups. I have white mesh lining next to the outer fabric and the second lining with the opening is made of the beige fabric I used elsewhere, simply because I had run out of beige lining to use it everywhere. Note my cups where from Halo and area available in a wide variety of cup sizes:

Here is what the swimsuit looks like with the cups in:

For interest here is a shot of the back of this suit, showing the closure and also what the exposed seams of the bodice look like when the lining and outer fabric are constructed as one. Note that wooly nylon in the serger loopers helps with serge finishing seams like this if you like:

Now a note on construction seams, thread, and elastic.

I have pretty much tried everything, wooly nylon and stretch thread in the needles of my serger even.

Here is what I have settled on.

Good polyester thread in the needles. If your serger thread is older pull on it to make sure it won't break. When they dry out over time they do. Replace it if this happens or use a good spool of sewing thread in your two serger needles.

Wooly nylon in both loopers. For stretch and comfort.

A triple stitch at my machine for seams that have to be industrial, like the suits I made for the little girls, placed next to the serger seam.

For the top stitching down the elastic I use sometimes a triple zig zag if there are many layers (I had to do this for the neckline of the cherries suit although I cover hemmed all other edges) with wooly nylon hand wound in the bobbin:

But most of the time I use my cover hem with wooly nylon in the looper which gives a nice finish and also great stretch. I think you can also see here how nice the first line of zig zag which initially attaches the elastic looks if you let the needle swing off the fabric:

Finally two really important things to think about when attaching the elastic:

1. Stretch the elastic but not the fabric when you sew. If you pull on both you will get waves. Sure there is a good chance that once stretched on the body these will disappear, but this is something to consider.

2. Think about how tight the elastic should be, particularly around the legs and armholes. Really the job of the elastic here is the firm the edges of the suit up and give them recovery not gather them in. When you stitch the elastic into a circle before you apply it try it on your body first for feel. Nothing is worse that a ring of elastic cutting off your circulation under your armpit or around the top of the leg! If you have to stretch the leg elastic at all it should only be at the back half of the opening, to cup the bum a bit maybe, but never along the front. IMO a pattern that gathers in the leg or armhole opening significantly is not a very good pattern.

The exception to this rule of course is the neckline where there needs to be some gathering in of the fabric so the neck doesn't gape. Here again I would use a bit of judgement - nothing should look gathered in on. The Jalie pattern above pulls in the neckline slightly and was not hard to put in. The neckline in the First Crush swimsuit didn't allow enough elastic length and I had to sort of have my feet up against the wall to stretch it enough to get it in. I am not totally happy with the results and am worried I am going to strangle my dear DIL with that suit. I will await the wearer's report.

So that's it folks for me on swimwear sewing, my muslin of a sew-along and a dog vision thrown in.

I will look forward to your comments and questions.

Then it's back to regularly unscheduled programming!

Sewing swimwear - the question of lining part one for today

Let's talk linings.

One of the differences between a high quality and a not high quality swimsuit is the lining.

Not all are lined completely. Some are lined at the crotch only, some at the front piece only, some have a partial lining in sort of a soft bra, and some are fully lined.

For kids swimsuits I usually line only the front and leave the back, which will still have the front crotch lined, unlined. This is because show through, if there is any, in lighter fabrics is not such an issue. And with kids you have to be careful of not making anything more constricting than possible - with those guys it's all about how it feels first and how it looks second. (Come to think about it if we are honest are the rest of us that different?)

For grown-ups I like to line the whole swimsuit.

The tricky part is getting the right lining.

Being a person who spends a lot of time in the water I am sensitive to this. Hands up if any of you have had a lining that sagged more than the outer fabric when wet. This happens a lot and really is not a great feeling.

Which leads me to these two ideas:

• test your lining wet
• make sure it maintains the same stretch as the outer fabric

For my current and recent projects I have used four different linings:

• For my maternity First Crush suit I used a superb black lining from Halo Fabric Addicts - definitely the best quality lining I have ever used, smooth and soft with virtually the same characteristics as the outer fabric:

•  For my everyday Diane Jalie suits I made for the kids and I this summer I used a swimwear mesh lining I got from Fabric Mart. I liked that it was a bit less restrictive for heavy swimming, important for the kids especially, and in all our fabrics preventing show through was not a problem because the outer fabrics were substantial. Note this is lining is heavier than ordinary fashion mesh and not as stiff as Powermesh. It has the same stretch as the outer fabric when wet too:

• For my yellow parrot suit I decided I definitely needed a real lining to prevent show through in the yellow fabric so I used self-fabric, essentially a second layer of the yellow swimwear, throughout. This is actually my least favourite option as two layers of swimwear can feel a bit heavy, and makes for a slightly more restrictive feeling suit, but always a decent option if you want to make sure that your lining matches the characteristics of the outer fabric obviously:

• Finally for the white and cherries suit for my daughter I am using a traditional beige swimwear lining. This is always the best choice for white fabrics if you are careful to make sure the stretch when wet factor is the same as the outer fabric. I got mine from Halo but fabrics like these are available in most fabric stores:

Now there are lots of folks out there who use Powermesh, which is and behaves exactly as it sounds, as a lining to smooth things over. 

I find Powermesh pretty powerful, too much for my comfort, and I personally have never done this. If I want to smooth anything out I use a swimwear fabric with some texture to it, ribbed ones or those with little bubble texture on the surface like cloque are wonderful for disguising purposes, and feel the same on as the shiny fabrics that catch the light and can be revealing. A style with some shirring accomplishes the same thing.

That said I do have some ambivalence about getting real wound up about worrying how you look in swimsuits.

The pattern choices are so much better than they used to be. Tankinis, skirted options, boys shorts - you no longer feel you have to be trapped in something that will require constant tugging.

Also your body tells your own story and that is just fine the way it is. 

If you have spent decades going to work and then getting dinner on the table, if you have had babies, C-sections, hysterectomies or stood at the counter and ate crackers out of the box with your coat still on when life had thrown you a stressor, and your belly has some jiggles well then world -deal with it. You have done enough of other kinds of dealing.

You are still here and game and that's what matters.

On Thursday my 90 year-old mother is coming down for a visit. 

That woman has game I can tell you. 

I actually got a call from her to ask about the pools we go to. She is bringing her bathing suit because she wants to go swimming with the great grandchildren and wanted to know if there was a pool that a lady who walks down to the grocery store every day with her walker could get into. Fortunately there is, a pool with a slope in and a hand rail, barrier free and wheelchair inclusive, that she says she might use although she doesn't want to go in an "old person's pool" but she wanted us to know that she isn't that good about climbing down into a swimming pool on a ladder anymore. As if we were expecting that.

So don't let anything keep you out of the pool. Particularly the fact you don't have anything snappy to wear.

More on that later.

Let's talk swimsuits: first instalment of my sort of sew-along

Well I promised a sew-along on swimsuits, one of the many topics on which I have too many opinions, and here we are ready to go.

Since I am not sure how really to do a sew-along let's not worry about that. BTW I am shutting down the FB page and we can just run this here in our familiar place in the blog and on Instagram where you can find me @bemodi

I had this idea that if I also ran a Facebook page people could post pictures of what they were making, which no one did which was fine with me because well it's summer and I am sure you are all very busy. Just reading about what we are focusing on is probably enough for most of us, and these thoughts can be filed away for when they are needed.

So swimsuits, bathing suits, all those garments that are meant to be worn in the water, are pretty interesting to make.

And these days there is no reason you can't make exactly what you want in exactly the same materials, or better, than you can get in the stores. 

Interestingly enough swimwear is one area of sewing to where there is a lot of money to be saved. This is based on my own observation that the more vulnerable a person feels in a garment the more she will pay for it even if it is made of very little materials. So with that great physiological insight and the little bit of math I have I figure you can make a really great swimsuit for less than half, more like a third of what a similar unit would cost to buy.

Then there is fit.

Fitting in swimwear isn't really that hard. There are not a lot of seams to work with but there is length. Length is such a powerful element in swimwear.

Short people suffer from baggy swimsuits when the bathing suits are too long, and that bagginess just gets worse when wet.

Tall people, like me, suffer from body strangulation in regular length swimsuits, and all the riding up and tugging that goes along with something not being long enough for coverage. I can't begin to describe to you how nice it feels to be able to add the 4" I need to body length to a bathing suit and as a result to actually feel my shoulders aren't being forced down or that my legs openings aren't creepy up creepily every time I move. 

As I have made swimsuits for my daughter and the girls this summer as well as myself I have been so interested to see that each of us needs that same 4" added whatever our size- like it's a family imprint or something.

For the purposes of this sew-along I am going to be working on, or have just completed, three different swimsuits.

The first one, a sort of retro version by request, for my daughter, is from Halo Fabric Addicts fine fabrics (yes I know I am using a lot of their stuff this summer,  and it has not been my cheapest option, but the quality is just so outstanding). Here is the Jalie pattern we are using and here is the fabric, lining and cups (they come in sizes which is nice) all from Halo:

For myself I am making another, my third version this season, of the Diane swimsuit pattern Jalie released this spring, in some random yellow fabric and yellow parrot print I got locally last year for the little girls who didn't like it because it was neither pink nor purple. 

Over the year I have been able to persuade myself it is age appropriate for me. If you don't think so I would appreciate it if you didn't say anything, since it did take me an entire year to warm up to it. I went ahead and cut out the cups from an old bra for this suit, and stitched them in (a friend told me this would be a good idea) before I found out about the better idea Halo swim cups that are actually designed for the water. My recycled bra cups really aren't although they do give my profile a familiar look. 

I already tried this old bra concept on another swimsuit and although they look fine dry they sort of hold the water when wet which requires a bit of discreet chest pressing every now and then. Sometimes going cheap is less than classy. However they are in the lining of this suit now so we are going to stick with, it and besides I have that chest pressing move more or less down on automatic now:

Finally I am going to show you what went on when I made my daughter-in-law a maternity swimsuit. I used Rad patterns First Crush pattern for a maternity suit which is really a maternity version of the standard First Crush pattern, which comes in an amazing range of variations:

Standard pattern as well as maternity options

We will have words about the instructions for this pattern later but the basic shapes are very interesting. I used this fabric and a particularly wonderful black lining from Halo. The pattern has a sort of built-in bra in it:

So that's me. Now those of you who are sewing along what are you making.