A new Bikini

I had almost forgotten just how hard it is to get sewing done during the summer when the kids are out of school - there's just so much other fun stuff to do that it gets shunted aside.  I was having some sewing withdrawals for a while so, as I didn't have any knitting to do I actually spent a couple of evenings sewing last week.  I still can't decide if I like sewing in the evenings or not - Its definitely not my preferred sewing time, but I did enjoy it for a change of pace. (I reckon my husband didn't mind having full control of the television for a couple of nights either).

So what did I make - a new bikini.  I wanted to try out the new bra pattern again (the Bravo Bella Bravo Bra #2) and I've been wanting to make a new bikini top for a while so I decided to combine the two.

My plan for the bikini top was to use the basic bridge and band pattern from the bra and then draft a single piece cup to go with it - I thought if I used all the little pieces it would look too bra like - plus with the stretch material all those pieces weren't really necessary.

The material I used was a poly lycra in a blue and purple peacock type print.

They had this fabric in a couple of different colour ways when I bought it - but I figured that these were my colours so I had to go for this one.

I cut out the bridge and band as per the pattern and then it took only two tries to get a cup shape that I liked.  To make the straps I cut them first out of the swimsuit fabric and then out of nylon tricot cut so the stretch runs across the strap rather than along it and basted the two fabrics together.  I sewed the strap as one and turned it inside out and sewed it onto the top of the cups.

For the lower elastic band I used 1" wide knit elastic. and then I used 3/8" wide knit elastic for the bra edges.  I took apart another old bra for the underwires and inserted them in tricot casing as per the instructions.  I cut a second lot of all the bra pieces and full lined the entire bra to give extra support.

The straps I left free at the back so they can be tied as a halter and to finish off the back of the bra I cut the band about half way and finished off the edges neatly, then sewed two strips of 1" wide knit elastic at the top and bottom of one side of the band and snaps on the other side to close it.

I'm really quite happy with how this turned out.

For the bottoms I used the bottom half of the pattern I used for this swimsuit, but lengthened the crotch pattern section a bit to raise the pants up the leg.  Again I cut two pieces of each pattern piece so the pants are fully lined.  The leg openings were sewed together inside out then turned right side out and a piece of fold over elastic was sewed around each opening.  The top edge was finished with a piece of 2" wide knit elastic.

The pants ended up a bit skimpier in the backside than I had intended but otherwise  I like them.

I tried out this swimsuit at the pool this afternoon.  The top works fantastically, but the bottoms are way too loose. I need to take in a good 1/2 off each side seam and take the waist band elastic in at least 2 inches.

Update:  I did the changes I suggested above this morning and wore the suit to the beach all day today and the bottoms worked perfectly.  But I've decided on one further change - rather than tying the straps as a halter I'm going to have to sew them in at the back - probably crossed over.  The pressure on the base of my neck gave me a low grade headache all day today - no more halters for me!

A Beatles vintage T

A couple of months ago as my weekly sit and knit group, one of the other knitters told us about a yard sale going on just around the corner with boxes and boxes of old patterns.  Of course I couldn't resist so on my way home I took a quick detour.  Well she wasn't joking when she said there were boxes and boxes of patterns - and they were selling them cheap - like a whole box for $3.  What's a girl to do I ask you?  I thought about jut grabbing a box to two, but I've been trying to reduce my stash of junk lately and didn't want to add too much, so instead I sat there for probably close to an hour going through each of the patterns to see what I would like.  I ended up finding probably 20 patterns or so that I really liked and that might even fit and left it at that.  A pretty good haul for $3.

One of the patterns I found was a Carefree Pattern from McCall's 4488.

View C is what I bought this pattern for.  The pattern is in a size medium 14-16 which is probably the closest size to my bust size though still too small in the waist and hips, but that should be easy enough to rework. However since I had no idea jut how the size would work I wanted to try it with some "not precious" material.  I went through my stash and couldn't really find anything I was willing to waste so went to my to be recycled box of old clothes that no longer get worn but I can't throw out.

What I found was an old shirt that I bought many years ago - probably some time back in the 90's.  The shirt is long sleeved and button up but made from a very light weight fabric so  I could never find an time to wear it.  However the print on the fabric is fabulous - a psychedelic Beatles theme.  I decided it was about time I remade the shirt.

I cut the shirt apart at all the seams and started laying out the pattern pieces.  The back pattern piece fitted onto the back piece of fabric fairly well - the only adjustments I made were taking 5" out of the length  (which I would have done anyway as at 5'1" all patterns are too long for me) and removing the seam down the back putting the pattern on the existing back fold.

I did not have enough fabric to make the big puffy sleeves so I went for the sleeves on view E instead.  I cut these out of the top of the existing sleeve pieces and that left enough to get the bust piece out of the remaining sleeve fabric.  The problem came from getting the lower front piece out of the existing shirt front pieces.  I had to put an extra seam down the center front, but I also did not have enough width so ended up having to piece an extra strip down the side of the front piece to make it work.

It's a bit hard to see the seam lines in all that pattern! 

The top half of the original front pieces were then used for the facings with just a little left over.

Once the front pieces were sewn together I followed all instructions from the pattern with the exception of putting the sleeves in flat then sewing the side seams rather than doing the side seams first the setting in the sleeves.

At the very end there was just one more little variation - I had cut the front and back pieces with the existing hem on the bottom - with the exception of  a 5/8" wide section on one side of the center front.  To disguise this I took the center front seam up about 2 inches and then cut on an angle till the piece that was missing was no longer an issue creating a triangular vent at center front, this was turned under and top stitched.

The final verdict - I like it but there are a few issues that I would change if I were to make this pattern again.

• The fit around the waist and hips is fine even though it should be too tight according to all the measurements, 
•  It could probably do with a large bust adjustment as the angled seam at front does not sit right under the bust but rather about 1/4 of the way up the bust.  
• The sleeves are a smidge too tight and could do with an extra 1/4-1/2 inch around the bicep. 
•  Finally there is a bit of pooling in the lower back but if I just put in the back seam like I was supposed to that would disappear.

Simple Summer Basics

I've been trying to do a bit of wardrobe building lately, churning out some simple pieces that were needed by each of us. L got two new pairs of shorts and a jumpsuit.  J one new pair of shorts and a tank top and I got a simple dress for wearing to the pool.

L's first pair of shorts were made from an old pair of my pants. The pants were still good they never got a lot of wear as I didn't like the colour on me and I never had anything to wear them with.  Plus they were a smidge small when I bought them and I've put on weight since then.  So I turned them  into shorts for L.

I cut the pants down each seam leaving all pockets in place and cut each piece down to the size required.  The only problem that I had was that the back pockets were in the wrong place and ended up being chopped off on the final product.

Oh well I doubt she would have ever used them.  I cut off and cut down the existing waist band, elastic ad drawstring and was able to reuse that as well.

The only thing I did wrong was forget to straighten off the legs for the hem so when I went to turn up the hems I had a problem.

L's second pair of pants were something I've been thinking about for a quite some time.  A while ago I was asked  by a friend to make some pillows for her yoga studio.  They wanted half of them in a teal green and half in a purple.  I found some beautiful linen to make them out of and when I cut the triangular pillows out I ended up with quite a few right angle triangles left over.  Not enough material to make anything out of by them selves, but I figured it'd be great to patch work the two colours together and make something and that's what I did here.

I cut a bunch of 4" square and sewed them together in alternating colours then used the resulting fabric to cut out a pair of shorts.  I wasn't sure what I was going to do with the waistband so in the end I just ended up sewing a piece of 2" wide black elastic as a waist band.   All seams were finished on the overlocker to avoid the seams fraying.

 A very simple pair of shorts,  but quite striking.  I really love this pair of shorts.

L's jumpsuit was made using the Closet Case File Sallie jumpsuit pattern.

I started with the size 0 pattern, took about 3/8" off the width of the both the top and shorts.  I also raised the V neckline quite a bit so that I could eradicate the back tie - I figured that would be too hard to a 8 year old to do up.  I puled the elastic a bit too tight along the neckline which has resulted in some puckering but at least it stays on her shoulders.  The shoulder width was bought in by about 1" and tapered to the underarm.  The pants were cut off to shorts length - with about a 4.5" inseam length and I cut down the size of the pockets a bit to make sure they fit within the smaller shorts.  I'm very happy with how this turned out and L loves it.

J's shorts were made out of three cushion covers.  I was given these cushions, covered in corduroy in bright primary colours, quite some time ago, but I don't generally like having cushions on my couch so the covers were resigned to my "to be remade into something else" pile.  I finally got around to reusing them.  There wasn't quite enough fabric to make the shorts out of a single colour.  I thought about doing front and back in different colours but decided that would look a little weird and decided to go with stripes of all three colours instead.  They turned out a but too big, but J will grow into them.

The tank top pattern for J was taken from L's tank top pattern and modified to look a bit more boyish.

 Unfortunately I didn't do a good job on the armhole and neckline binding and the top half of it looks all puckered now.

I thought about taking the bindings off and redoing them, but that would mean getting J to take it off which has proved to be a problem so far - he loves this shirt which is very flattering - maybe I'll just make him a second one!

Finally for myself I made a new dress.

This is now the third attempt to use this material.  It began it's life as a pale yellow knit fabric.  I used it some of it to make L a shirt a couple of years ago but it was never a good colour.  Always looked washed out and showed stains really easily so last year when I wanted to make a pool dress I decided to take the rest of the material and use it up.  I made a dress using no pattern.  I cut a hole in the middle for my head, added elastic around the waist and to gather up the shoulders, a small bust dart to give some shaping to the garment and I was done.  But still the colour looked terrible.  So I threw it in  bucket of purple dye.  The  colour took pretty well, except around the gathers at waist and shoulder where I got more of a tie dye look.  I wore the dress to the pool for a season, but never really loved it so I decided to remake it again this year.

I went back and pulled out my Sallie jumpsuit pattern with short skirt.  There ended up being less material available than I originally thought there would be, but I managed to cut the kimono top pattern out of the existing skirt and had just enough in the original bodice to make a skirt if I put a seam up center front and center back.  The left overs were then rummaged through to find pieces just big enough to make the pockets.

I didn't want to line the bodice of this dress so instead I used a heap of fashion elastic from Walmart to finish the neckline, armholes and pockets.

 

The bottom hem I didn't bother finishing, but I cut it with a bit of a baseball look scooping up at the side seams and making it slightly longer in the back than in the front.

The resulting dress is ok for the pool but not the best dress in the world

And finally a bra......

For the longest time I've been thinking and planning about making myself a bra.  It's been on my to do list really ever since I got back into this sewing game.  About a year ago I tried to create a soft bra pattern and made my very first bra but it was in no way a success and has sat unworn in my draw ever since.

 About February this year I had another crack at the bra making, taking a free pattern from the internet and trying to work out how it all went together.  I almost got there but it just wasn't great and those last few finishing steps were beyond me and once again the project got sidelined.

During Me Made May I made a pledge to try and create an entire me made wardrobe including bras, I didn't got around to it during May, but about 1 week ago I finally got around to buying a bra pattern. The  BravoBella Bravo Bra #2.

I did all the measurements suggested to figure out what size to use and decided on a 36E.  I printed out all the relevant pattern pieces.  The first thing I noticed about the pattern was that there is no scale.  I printed it out at 100% and hoped that it was to the right scale and started cutting my fabric.

I found some white nylon tricot at my local fabric store and bought it along with some power net.  I cut the cup pieces out of the tricot.  The bridge and band I originally cut out of power net, but after seeing just how much stretch the stuff had I decided to cut them out of tricot as well and decided to use both fabrics sandwiched together.   Looking at the white tricot cups I decided that it was just too boring and cut the second layer of the cups out of some purple satin brocade that I had in my stash.

I followed the pattern instructions to make the straps, then put the cups together and sewed the cups to the bridge.  I don't have any new underwires, just ones out of old bras so I made my own underwire casing out of bias cut satin and sewed them onto the bridge.  The thing that I found most useful in the pattern were the instructions for cutting the elastic to length.  Again I don't have the right plush elastics for bra making but I made do with some basic knit elastics from my stash and sewed them on per instructions.  I sewed on the straps and tried the bra on ......problem......it's way too small.

The band does not come close to meeting at the back - I added a piece of 2" wide elastic at center back just so I could try it on!

and the cups are very much too small (plus one of the cups ended up smaller than the other  not sure how that happened).

So I didn't bother finishing the bra at this point.  I think it was a combination of less stretch in the band due to the tricot and the non stretch satin as well as the elastic I used, plus of course the cup size was just too small.

After taking a day or two off I started all over again. This time I went up to a 38G.  I printed out the band and bridge pattern pieces at a size 38 then modified the bridge so that I kept the height of the 38 but the width of the 36.  The back band I cut at size 38 and the cups I cut at 38G.

I cut the inner cups out of tricot again as well as the band and bridge pieces.  This time for the outer fabric I decided to go with a very stretchy knit fabric that was left over in my stash from this project.

I think I sewed every seam in this bra at least 3 times.  I don't know what was wrong with me, but I kept putting things together wrong and having to rip them out and start again.  but in the end I think the bra ended up well...acceptable.

I made a few other changes to the pattern this time around.  Rather than using 5/8" elastic around the band I decided to go with 2" wide elastic.

 In order to have the back the right width for the  hooks and eyes I cut the back band at and angle from the top of the side seam down to the center back.

I like the way this sits under the arm - no wiring poking up into my arm pit - but it does mean that the bra sits further down my back that a bra usually would.

Everything else was made as per the instructions.  This bra turned out better than the original.  The band is the right size now, but the cups are too big.  Once the entire bra was finished I pinned out a tuck from the top down to just below the bust point and sewed it in so that it fits.  You can just see the seam in the picture below.

This bra is wearable, not the most supportive, but seems to be comfortable.  .

I will definitely try to make this pattern again with the same band size but smaller cup size and a more stable cup fabric.   I don't love the shape of this at the moment - I feel like my boobs are spread out too far but I don't know if that just because the cup size is wrong.   I'll give the pattern one more try before I make up my mind for good.

And in the mean time this bra is definitely wearable and I don't have that "get this bra off me" feeling at 4pm with it that I have with a lot of my store bought ones.

Simple green knitted tank

When I finished my Triple L Tweed top i was at a bit of a loss as to what to knit next.  I've had this ball of pure merino super wash in my stash for quite some time but I was never sure what to make with it.

The yarn is a HPKY (Hand Painted Knitting Yarns)  Regina Louise DK weight wool in forest green .  When I bought the wool I was thinking of making socks, however after making one pair of socks out of this wool and having them last less than a month before getting holes I figured another pair was out of the question.  So what else could I do with one single ball?

....another tank top, this time I wanted to go for a thinner strap look.  I decided on a very simple pattern.  A lower band of 2 by 2 rib was knit in the round from the bottom up. Once again my gauge didn't work very well for some reason and the top ended up being looser than I wanted so once I changed to stockinette stitch I started decreasing every couple of rows till I got to the right number of stitches I wanted.

I continued knitting in the round till I  got to the length I wanted  to the underarm (I wanted it as long as possible but did only have the one ball of yarn) then I split my ball of wool.  I split the front stitches into two and decreased at both the armhole and neck edge creating two triangles.  I did the same for the back stitches.

Unfortunately I ran out of wool about 3/4 of the way up the back two triangles.  There wasn't enough of the project left to buy another ball of wool, (especially at $29 a ball) so I went through my stash and found the closest match.  An Icelandic Plötulopi in forest green that I picked up at a grocery store while touring around Iceland.  The texture of the two wools couldn't be more different but I decided I didn't really care and used it anyway.

Once my triangles were down to 9 stitches I changed to double pointed needles and made the remaining stitches into an i cord.  A three needle bind off joined front and back and the top was finished.

Its a bit see through in some lights and could have done with some shaping in the front to account for my boobs - but otherwise I love it.  It's light and airy and feels beautiful to wear.