I really do possess that quintessentially Australian love of the sea and all things water. I grew up about 5 minutes away from the beach and I associate that salty smell of the ocean, preferrably intermingled with pine trees, as the smell of freedom and happiness.

After ten years in Europe, it still makes me a little sad that the ocean and water tends to be more something associated with vacation time, than with everyday family life.

I also look at everything, no doubt, through the lens of a nostalgic expat, for whom the cold, grainy and opaque grey of the North Sea can never match up the crystal clear blue of the Pacific or Indian or Southern oceans.

All of this long-winded introduction is to explain why I think it is that, every July, even though I have no intention of sewing a swimsuit, one always manages to sneak its way onto my sewing queue.

And so, without too much further nostalgia, I give you my take on the Megan Nielsen Cottesloe Swimsuit!

Insta Inspiration

In addition to my nostalgia for the water, I blame Mia over at Sew North for this swimsuit!! It was her colour-blocked version of the Cottesloe Swimsuit which totally blew my mind and led to unashamed copying.

I like to think of it as an homage.

By the way, I’m not going to cover in this post any aspect of the “how to” side of the colour blocking. I took all the details unashamedly from Mia’s wonderful and detailed blog post. So if you want any information about how to achieve a similar colour blocking effect, pop straight over to Sew North!

The other element of this “must sew a swimsuit” perfect storm was catching sight of this wonderful ribbed swimsuit fabric from Blackbird Fabrics.

This fabric sent me into a Pinterest swimsuit rabbit hole…

And basically, I couldn’t get the idea of these two things out of my head. So I knew I had no choice but to bring this vision to life.

Oh and we had a heatwave (now well and truly finished!). That also send me firmly into unplanned swimsuit sewing mode!

And all that explains the perfect storm of the unplanned swimsuit!

My Cottesloe Swimsuit

My Cottesloe Swimsuit is a size 14. It is based on view B, but some significant modifications have been made (more on that later). I also chose to add the shelf bra designed for view A (using cups taken from an old swimsuit), as well as adding a full lining to my Cottesloe Swimsuit.

OK, where to start with the modifications. I found the Cottesloe Swimsuit itself to be a little bit too sporty looking for what I wanted. So I lowered and slightly widened the neckline, as I was trying to come up with a neckline that would work better with spaghetti-esque straps.

Turning to the back, I lowered the lowest point of the back by a couple of inches from view B. Although this lowest point is still much higher than the low back version, view A. I also just cut the straps off at the back entirely, as I wanted a backless strappy swimsuit.

We’ll get to those straps later.

Sticking around the back, I was worried from some pictures of seen that the Cottesloe Swimsuit is a bit too cheeky for my personal preferences. When cutting, I already added a couple of centimetres of additional butt coverage to the pattern as designed for my size.

I also think that the Cottesloe Swimsuit is actually a tad to short in the torso for me, and I need about an extra inch or so of length in the torso.

Full acknowledgement that all of these sizing imperfections come entirely from the fact that I was kind of trying to hack the pattern as I went, without having a clear idea what I wanted. For the back, I literally had no idea what I wanted it to look like, so I cut the original pattern pieces, put it all together and started pinning and hacking on my body.

That was when I saw that to make something going up into a less sporty spaghetti strap, I should definitely have added a bit more coverage under the arm to ensure that the side is fully secured from any side boob slippage.

Ahhhh, I hear you say. A muslin seems essential when you are hacking into a pattern with no clear idea what you are doing.

I agree.

I even went and bought fabric to make my muslin.

But then I got home and decided that the colour of my muslin swimsuit fabric was so pretty that I couldn’t actually bear the thought of making a muslin out of it. So I decided to keep it for another swimsuit anothr day.

Leading to the make-it-work approach on this one!!

Straps for the Cottesloe Swimsuit

Despite all the above notes about what I might have done better, I am definitely still a big fan of this swimsuit and it is totally appropriate for most of my swimming needs.

Let’s face it, with a 4 year constantly in tow whenever I’m near the water, my days of lap swimming are over for now in any event. I sewed these straps with elastic on the inside, to make them extra strong and flexible. I used the instructions for doing so in this blog post by Sophie over on Ada Spragg.

In case you’re interested, I’ve also put a permanent story up on instagram about making the straps.

This was a pretty simple, if time-consuming process. The making of the straps actually took much longer than the sewing of the entire swimsuit (including the shelf bra and lining). And that is no exaggeration whatsoever!

Cottesloe Swimsuit: The instructions

The Cottesloe Swimsuit, as drafted, is incredibly quick to sew and the instructions are easy to follow. This makes a great first swimwear project.

Having said that, there were a couple of places where I thought the instructions made things a bit needlessly difficult.

The main thing was the installing of the lining. The pattern instructions suggest pinning the legs and arm/neck of the shell to the lining and treating as one when you attach the swimwear elastic.

Now, for me, attaching narrow swimwear elastic, while stretching it out, is already a pretty fiddly sewing moment. The last thing I need is two layers of fabric to be dealing with at this point. I understand that it is done this way to avoid creating additional bulk at these elastic points. I still found it, personally, necessary to actually baste the lining and shell together, rather than simply pinning it, in order to make it easy to actually treat these as one piece of fabric for the purpose of elastic attachment.

Speaking of elastic, I also found that the method for installing it in round places, such as the leg, wasn’t my favourite. The aim is presumably to reduce bulk because, rather than sew the elastic into the round before installing it, the pattern has you start my just overlapping the beginning and end of the elastic. I found this really difficult and challenging to do successfully.

I also note a tip I learned from the Sew Your Dream Swimsuit class my Closet Case (you can see the Sophie Swimsuit I made last year while following that class here) that, when installing swimsuit elastic, you don’t always need the same amount of, well, elasticity, everywhere. That’s why I’m not a huge fan of the method of “divide your elastic into quarters and ease it in evenly around the leg hole”. The truth is, I don’t really need any of that extra security of tight elastic around my front leg, but I do need it around the butt and crotch. I prefer to ease in the elastic in a more targetted manner, thinking about where I really need things nice and tight and where I don’t.

Having said this, I totally understand that the “divide in quarters” method if much more accessible. Especially if it’s your first time sewing a swimsuit.

One thing I am very happy with is the overall elastic ratio around the leg. Both the swimsuits I have previously sewn (link to my Sophie Swimsuit is just above and I’ve also sewn a Bombshell Swimsuit), don’t get as much wear as I would like because they are uncomfortable to wear all day long as the leg elastic is too tight. So far, the leg elastic of my Cottesloe Swimsuit feels a lot more comfortable.

Although that’s something I will really only know for sure after a few full days at the beach.

Cottesloe Swimsuit: Backless strappy hack

So I knew I wanted straps. I knew I wanted to be able to plait the three colours together. Beyond that, I wasn’t really sure what I wanted the straps to do, so I decided to simply make some extra long straps (these are each one metre) and I would decide by way of experiment.

Well, once my Cottesloe Swimsuit was all put together, I could see that I felt a tad worried about how low it come on the side with my backless hack. This meant that it felt most secure when the straps are tied around my neck in a halter.

But I do love the look of these straps doing criss-crosses and other pretty patterns. So I decided to add in a couple of loops are leave it, for now, as an “open to be tied in several ways” kind of swimsuit.

Once I actually get some real life wear out of it, I may be able to decide on a more permanent strap situation. For example, if my side boob worry turns out to be a non-issue, actually securing the straps as a simple cross back may be my preference.

For now, in case you’re wondering whether these straps are a tad inconvenient and difficult to do up on my own.

Yes.

The answer is yes, they most definitely are.

But, for now, I am happy to suffer the occassional inconvenience for the sake of cuteness.

Oh and, finally, a little P.S! If you like to get your blog hits through Bloglovin’, feel free to follow me over there: you can find me here. And you can find me on Instagram here.