This bird-themed beauty is the Bombshell Swimsuit from Closet Case Patterns (view C) and I’m not sure what I am most grateful for – the fact that I have a swimsuit that actually makes me (me!) feel great or the fact that Heather Lou’s game-changing pattern and impeccable sew-a-long sparked so many ridiculous phrases in my head that I actually had myself in stitches (* sewing pun intended!):

“Now, that’s a crotch sandwich!”

“Watch out for the dangly bits!”

“I need more butt action!”

(Will the words “crotch” and “butt” ever cease being hilarious to me? But alas, I digress…)

When I first started learning to sew, I couldn’t have dreamed that I would ever willingly put a picture of myself in the Bombshell Swimsuit on the internet or that I could actually even make one. Here I am, doing both – a testament to the transformative power of sewing: the skills we can learn and the body confidence and awareness that we can cultivate.

This post is going to share a few things I learned making the Bombshell Swimsuit pattern, just in case they prove useful to anyone else contemplating it – in particular, tips on fabric selection and how to make view C work for a small bust!

Bombshell swimsuit fabric choices … and a sausage dance

I’ve used two fabrics in my Bombshell Swimsuit: a Sport Lyrca from Spoonflower, paired with a plain lycra from my local fabric store. Let’s start with the Spoonflower fabric – this was my first experience buying from the site and I must confess to having frittered away hours eyeballing the incredible options like a kid in a candy store (hmm, imagine a fabric store that is also a candy store…).

I decided on this gorgeous print by a designer named Micklyn Le Feuvre. Ahh, what I wouldn’t give to actually be able to draw and design myself… I ended up only buying a fat quarter to use as a feature panel because, when printed by the metre, the repetition was spaced in a way that didn’t work for the Bombshell pattern. Is it just me or can it be quite a challenge to find fabric with a border print spaced just right?

So, I had my birdies, I needed some black swimsuit fabric.

My go-to local fabric store had a bunch of fabrics labelled “lycra”, with no information about composition. After accosting a sales assistant and madly waving Heather Lou’s Bombshell sew-a-long post about fabric choice on my phone in front of his face, he came back with a grand master book of fabric scraps and we ascertained that everything on that shelf was supposed to be 80% nylon and 20% lyrca – perfect! What could go wrong?

There were three shades of black to choose from and I went with the matte one – it seemed so thick and luxurious to touch. It wasn’t until I got it home and we started getting all up close and personal that I realised it was actually really, really, really thick. As in, umm-I-think-this-is-supposed-to-be-for-wet-suits-rather-than-swimsuits thick!

Nonetheless, I fearlessly forged ahead and the end result is actually incredibly supportive – I’ve never worn a swimsuit that holds everything up and in quite like this. The downside, however, is that this thing requires some serious sausage dancing to get in and out of – you know what I’m talking about!

Finally, I couldn’t get my hands on actual swimsuit lining anywhere in town, so I ended up lining with a black lycra mesh. Not sure if that’s within the Bombshell Swimsuit rules but it worked fine with a main fabric as hard core as mine!

Tech specs : sometimes hips do lie

And speaking of sausage dances, a few tips for sewing sillies like me who don’t always think everything through. When deciding what size to cut for my Bombshell Swuimsuit, I was surprised to see that, except for at the bust, my measurements lined up pretty nicely with the Bombshell size 10 although I was right at the limit of that size for my hip measurement. I breathed a mental sigh of relief and thought “Yes! For once, the fact that my thighs are actually bigger than my hips doesn’t matter because my thighs aren’t invited to this party”.

Speaking of thick, it didn’t cross my mind that the only way to actually get a swimsuit on is over those thighs. This oversight, combined with my super succulent foamy fabric, means I really need to get my wiggle on when pulling this Bombshell off and on. So if you too happen to be a bit thigh heavy, like me, you might want to keep “clearance” in mind when selecting what size to cut for your Bombshell Swimtui.

Even a small bust has no place to hide in a swimsuit

After much to-ing and fro-ing between views A and C of the Bombshell Swimsuit, I decided that perhaps C might be more flattering on a smaller bust. So I thought it might be useful here to share a few tips for making view C work when you don’t have a lot to work with!

Based on my measurements, I cut my halter cups smaller than the rest of the suit (size 8) and then made a few small tweaks.

First of all, I think that us A-cuppers can get away with slightly increasing the gap between the cups for more Va-Va-Voom factor (if that’s your thing). I like to get my wow factor in whatever way I can and I think that widening the gap to slightly more than an inch has proven quite flattering.

But the most important thing for my A-cup sisters to remember is that elastic is your friend.  Your best friend!  And you need to stretch it –  stretch it real good! The Bombshell Swimsuit instructions and sew-a-long call for elastic sewn in at an 80% ratio to the length of the edges around the vertical side edges of the halter cups. I thought I would simply increase the stretch factor to a 70% ratio to account for my diminutive proportions and bob’s your uncle.

Except that no, Bob is not my uncle.

If you have any doubt about fit across the bust, once you’ve sewn your elastic to your cups and gathered the bottom of the piece, baste it all together and try your Bombshell Swimsuit on.

I didn’t do that.

I just steamrolled ahead and topstitched everything before it dawned on me that a baste-test might be in order. Only then did I realise that the halter cups were not yet capable of withstanding a solid dive into the water, so I had to unpick both the topstitch and the elastic stitch before I could rectify the problem. (Hey, speaking of top stitching, am I the only sewing nerd who finds the 3×2 elastic zig zag stitch on their machine really, really pretty?)

In the end, I was too lazy to unpick all four sides, so I left the elastic stretched at a 70% ratio on the outside edge of the cups, but unpicked and redid my inside (cleavage) edges with an elastic ratio of 60%. This combination makes everything feel perfectly snug.

In sum, I generally don’t think much at all about my small bust when sewing (I’ve never done an SBA) since I am an avid proponent of push-up bras – but this is a swimsuit! There is no place to hide! But all that was really needed was a bit of extra stretch and a good baste to make it work.

Now back to that crotch sandwich

I followed the suggestion from the sew-a-long, originally from Carolyn, to encase the crotch seam. The less potential irritants in my crotch area, the better! To any swimsuit-sewing ambitious beginners who might be a tad confused as what needs to go where if you want an encased crotch seam in your Bombshell, this is what that looks like!

 

And here is the end result:

Heather Lou swimsuit voodoo

To start winding things up, I just want to say that the Bombshell Swimsuit is the bomb!! This was my first ever Closet Case Pattern and I was so impressed by how it came together so cleverly. I am in awe of the sewing voodoo genius that is Heather Lou. The whole concept of being able to match a regular swimsuit front with a boy leg, thanks to a little help from a skirt is a major “ahhh” moment. And the step when you can top stitch over both legs and the front in one continuous line feels like magic.

All in all, as we’d say in Australia “This is going straight to the pool room”.

Me vs. Serger: who’s the boss?

The pattern also helped me break new ground exploring my serger and made me realise that I need to teach that beast who’s the boss. I’ve had it for about 6 months and it has been transformative for me, but my capabilities are still very basic.

I finish seams, I sew seams and when – dread, horror – the monster needs to be re-threaded, I can usually manage to get it done after about 2-3 attempts.

So when the Bombshell sew-a-long instructions said to turn on your differential thread mechanism, I thought “differential what”. Followed closely by, does “on” mean up or down? I was forced to find and read my manual, which reminded me that this machine is actually capable of a lot more than I’m using her for.

Bombshell burnout (aka DON’T sew when tired)

Surely this must be the most oft-repeated and frequently ignored rule of sewing. But really peeps, DON’T. Even when you only have one row left to stitch.

Me? I break this rule all the time. I broke it this time. The result being that, in actuality, I only managed to finish my beautiful Bombshell Swimsuit after a several-day-long hissy fit after my serger tried to eat my Bombshell (breaking both needles in the process) at 10pm on a Sunday night when I was really-really-really JUST ABOUT TO FINISH! When I picked that Bombshell up again a few days later, it only took be 5 minutes to finish. But we all know that if I had continued that Sunday night, the same work would have taken at least an hour.

Sometimes the sewing godesses just have other sewists to attend to, who need their help more than you do.

And, finally, a naked sewist?

And speaking of finishing – am I the only one who often finds herself doing the final steps of a project half-naked after the final fitting? And when the project is a swimsuit, this sight if even more unbecoming than usual …

And with that image in mind, it’s time to sign off until the next project (speaking of which, I’ve just seen that Close Case Files have just released the Charlie Caftan which could be a great partner with Bombshell at the beach …).

In the meantime, I’ve got some overlocker needles that need replacing…