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Again, you can find the tour on Instagram with the hashtag: #suitupforsummer2021
Lowland Kids Gingham Hive Striped Swallow Designs Honeydew Kisses Little Lizard King
Jennuine Designs Greenstyle Creations Made for Mermaids Call Ajaire Hey June Boo Designs!
Sofiona Designs Love Notions Lil Luxe Collection Jalie Sweet Red Poppy
Raspberry Creek Fabrics releases a new set of swim fabrics once a year. They print their own custom designs in their shop! The swim base is thick and sturdy and has a matte finish and four way stretch. It is really easy to sew with a stretch needle on my vintage sewing machine. I actually did all of the sewing in this post solely on my sewing machine! Raspberry Creek Fabrics also offers boardshort fabric. I haven't sewn with it yet but really want to! The shop also carries lining (which is super soft), mesh, and power mesh. I totally want to try the meshes too.
We adore the blueberry fabric and was so excited it's available on the swim base! There's a new set of green basics too and I love the color so much!! The shade of green is beautiful and the polka dots are so fun. It's also available in stripes and gingham. We also picked the royal solid and beige lining. The navy polka dot and the pink polka dot have been in The Stash from Raspberry Creek Fabrics last year. (this year's pink has been adjusted to coordinate with this year's prints even better. Isn't that so cool that Diana does that?!)
JALIE DIANE
My girls picked the Jalie Diane swimsuit this year. They picked the Jalie Diane with Add On last year but hit a growth spurt early when everything shut down and didn't get to really wear their suits last summer when everything was closed. I'm not sure how much more they will get to wear them this year but since we live somewhere with hotter summers than last year we will have to play in the sprinklers in the backyard or something.
Ansley wanted to use the basic front of the Jalie Diane because she felt like the crossover add on pieces were a little itchy. The Diane is fully lined but the lining is sewn to the individual bodice pieces and Ansley didn't like it. She did agree to let me colorblock the front though! I found a pic by instagram user @delene_potgieter and knew this was exactly what I wanted to do! However I forgot to account for the elastic seam allowance at the back so the blueberries front section should've been about 3/8 inches longer and the top of the solid blue should've been about 3/8 inches shorter. It's totally wearable though and with the blue in the blueberry print and the blue of the solid print it's not as visually jarring, at least I hope so.
She also requested cups this year, which I was really happy to add since I remember being her age and size and how awkward it was that the only swimsuits that had cups were a matronly style, which wasn't my style at all. The Jalie Diane includes extremely thorough instructions for adding the cups. You can check out the instructions on their website! I have never done that much marking and have never gotten cups aligned as well before. The only confusion I had was knowing if the right side of the cups in the instructions was referring to the concave or convex part of the cups. Lol. The other little surprise is the cups ended up a little low on Ansley's body but there was really no way to know where they'd end up (since the fabric stretches and has negative ease) without sewing them up in a practice version. I didn't have any extra cups on hand so we just went with it. They still totally work and I suspect the positioning of cups would be just right for someone older, especially post breastfeeding.
I tried to convince Lisbon that a diagonal colorblock would be really fun but she wouldn't agree to it because she didn't want to split the blueberries up, which is understandable! She is thrilled she can wear her blueberry swimsuit under her blueberry dress! It worked out just as well because I forgot to trim one edge of the pattern (I'd trimmed the tiled pattern but ont pieces of a modified Greenstyle Power Sports Bra for me out of the wrongly cut pattern piece!
MODIFIED GREENSTYLE POWER SPORTS BRAS
It's almost silly to say these are modified because they are like barely modified lol. I wanted to try straight straps after seeing a post in a Faecbook group and because the crossed straps always peek out of my shirts. I love having the option of sports bras in swim fabric to wear under a rashguard or dress out of swim fabric or, honestly, in daily life. I sewed tubes of fabric for the straps wrong sides together, turned them right side out, and threaded the swim elastic through with a safety pin. I used the longest cross strap length because when I held the pattern piece up to my body it looked like just the right length. I did end up shortening the straps by about an inch on the pink and green one after basting the elastic in and trying it on and two inches on the blueberry one since I had to unpick the bottom band (see below). The straps on the blueberry one are a bit more supportive. I sewed the cups in since loose swim cups are one of my pet peeves. (and since one ended up in the washer filter since I forgot to wash it in a mesh bag).
For the pink and green one I wanted to see how it would look with a longer band. I doubled the height of the existing band pattern piece and it feels like how I imagine a longline bra would feel (since I don't own one). I debated elastic at the top of the band only but it feels fine without any elastic so I left it off. If the band starts to creep up at the bottom I'll consider adding clear elastic so it's a bit more grippy.
SOME SWIM SEWING TIPS:
Consider Ordering a Box of Elastic and Mark Your Cut Pieces
The Jalie Diane has a lot of elastic pieces. I ordered a box of 3/8 inch cotton swim elastic from Amazon as soon as it was available (after The Great Elastic Shortage ended). It's currently unavailable but I have an affiliate link for a box of 1/4 inch cotton swim elastic here. I cut the back elastics right before sewing them onto the swimsuit but decided to cut the neck, arms, and leg elastics at the same time when it finally occurred to me to LABEL them! So here's my new lifechanging tip- label your elastic! I use Crayola Ultra Washable markers to label the elastic and to trace my pattern pieces and to mark notches. The elastic ends up being encased though if you don't have washable markers it's probably okay.
Quarter or Eighth (or Sixteenth) your Elastic Openings
I also like to mark the quarter mark on the elastics themselves and on the fabric. I use Wonder Clips to clip the elastic to the fabric at the quarters and then stretch the elastic and mark the eighths with Wonder Clips too. (I'm 99% sure I marked the eighths with marker first on the neckline since it's such a long piece and then Wonder Clipped in sixteenths)
Topstitch Wide Elastic
I have sewn quite a few Greenstyle Power Sports Bras but for some reason I've gotten lucky with the bottom band elastic staying put. I sewed this cute one and washed it once and it came out of the washer with the elastic twisted like 22 times!!! So sad. :( There were so many twists that I couldn't untwist it without unpicking the entire bottom band and straightening it out and sewing it back shut. I would've saved myself 45 minutes of unpicking if I had just topstitched to begin with. Learn from my mistake! I don't own a coverstitch so I just used a wide zigzag for all of the topstitching. Sad Before:
Happily Ever After:
I also chose to topstitch my straps with a zigzag stitch so the fabric doesn't twist around the elastic like my other non topstitched bras. :)
Thanks so much for stopping by!
Happily Ever After:
I also chose to topstitch my straps with a zigzag stitch so the fabric doesn't twist around the elastic like my other non topstitched bras. :)
Thanks so much for stopping by!