I’m here, I swear. I have been the whole time! I’ve been in a funk, and apparently that funk has lasted quite a while. There’ve been a few failed sewing projects in that time, nothing that I felt like sharing with the world… But times, they are a changin’.

I’m going to go gym hopping soon to find a place I can swim that won’t be busy *all* day (ha, good luck). Before I could do that though, I needed a swimsuit. I mean, I have a couple swimsuits but they’re just not comfortable. Or flattering. So, it’s time to make my own.

I already owned the Siren Swim Top and the Hello Sailor Bottoms from P4P. I decided that I wanted to have a tankini instead of bikini though, for comfort. That’s when I also decided to nix the Hello Sailor bottoms for a pair of full coverage Bunzies from Stitch Upon a Time.

The fabric was purchased forever ago at Fabricland.

But before I could use the pretty fabric, I opted to make a full muslin out of performance fabric. I knew it wouldn’t be exactly the same end result, but it worked out well.

Muslin:

      

This was probably my most modded attempt at anything to-date, minus the final version you’ll see down below.

Siren mods:

• Opened the armscythe
• Thinner straps, two straight and two crossed
• Changed the main fabric piece to be a tank, using the body from Layer Me Up (also P4P)

Bunzie mods:

• Fully lined
• Swim elastic around the leg openings

The muslin of the top actually went a bit better than I had expected. It wasn’t smooth sailing but it wasn’t rough seas (har har). I fudged the seams a bit as the tank was wider than the lining. I did not think about this when I proceeded on to the final product, and it came back to bite me in the ass.

The muslin of the bottoms, on the other hand. I went in with a mental picture of how it’d work, and then spent a couple of hours proving myself wrong. What DID happen though, was that I figured it out myself and managed to have a pretty good end result. And now that I know how to do it the right way, the final one should be much easier (she says now..).

Final:

 

The final version of the top had the same mods, except I also added a swim lining, so the bra portion was three layers. This proved much more difficult in practice than in theory. Layers were moving, I had to baste everything multiple times…The size difference between the tank and the bra was much more noticeable and a much larger headache. All in all, it took 3.5 hours not including hemming. Which I have still yet to do because you cannot tell. Whoops.

The bottoms were relatively easy to assemble. I had worked out the kinks in the muslin and they were pretty straightforward. Immediately after making them, I sorta hated them. So I put them away for a few days and tada, I like them. Silly how that works.