Suit Up For Summer! | RCF Blog Tour 2022

*This fabric was provided to me for free. All views and opinions are my own.

With summer just around the corner, I’m so excited to be back for this blog tour with Raspberry Creek Fabrics! I love the swim fabric from Raspberry Creek and couldn’t wait to get my hands on the newest prints. In fact, the swimsuits from the last blog tour are still huge favorites of mine and I wanted another one in the mix for all my summer plans. If you have yet to sew a swimsuit, I highly recommend you give it a try. It isn’t as scary as it seems and you can get a lot out of a small amount of fabric.

Fabric

Picking fabric is always one of the hardest part of sewing swim, but the Strawberry Fields Main Floral (print on the left) caught my eye immediately while choosing the coordinate took a bit more time. There are some really gorgeous coordinates in this collection, and I would have them all if I could, but I ultimately decided on the Strawberry Fields Tonal Dot Navy (print on the right).

Quality fabric really makes a difference when it comes to sewing swim and the swim from Raspberry Creek is among the best I’ve sewn with. My swim lining is also from Raspberry Creek.

Pattern

I wanted to make a swimsuit for myself that I knew I would love so I decided to stick with the same tried and true pattern I’ve used before: the Cottesloe swimsuit from Megan Nielsen. I’ve made several iterations of this pattern, but the one I made for this blog tour is the same one I used last time. The pattern has been modified to fit my body proportions and I already know it sews up beautifully in Raspberry Creek swim fabric.

Size Modifications

Let’s talk about sizing for a minute. If you have similar proportions to mine, where my upper/high bust measurement is the same/bigger than my full bust and my waist size is bigger than my hip, then you may have had the same fit problems I had when I first tried to sew swim (or many other garments too). I was all but ready to give up on sewing swim for myself until I found the magic modifications for this suit and I want to go into more detail of what worked for me.

I go into more details on how I made these in my previous blog tour post, but here are the size modifications I made again:

I made view D which has wider elastic at the underbust and high waisted bottoms.
Top: I graded from a size 0 to size 4 at the underbust and cut size 4 elastic.
Bottoms: I graded from a size 8 at the waist to size 0 and cut size 8 elastic.
The swimsuit is fully lined with sewn in cups.

Finding what worked for me:

My body shape is more like a rectangle than an hourglass, yet most size charts are laid out for hourglasses. I’m also smaller chested and don’t measure on a sewing cup size chart, where you subtract your upper/high bust measurement from your full bust. For me, I’m not even close to an A cup. I’m also 5 feet tall. The combination of all of that makes it very difficult to decide on a size and I often have to spend a day or more trying to figure out what size and adjustments to make.

It took me awhile to realize all of this and that I wasn’t alone in these proportions. Once I figured it out, it was like a door opening that I didn’t even realize was there and I created these hashtags on Instagram to help others dealing with the same problem: #UpperBiggerThanFull and #WaistBiggerThanHip.

My most common adjustments:

Choosing a size based on my upper/high bust and making a small bust adjustment. Sometimes that makes darts very small or removes them all together.
Grading out for my waist. Sometimes that means drawing a line from the bust out to a larger waist size and back to a smaller hip size. Or a straight line from the bust to the hem of a shirt. Or a straight light from the hip to the larger size at the waist.
Shortening the pattern by 2 inches. Usually that’s 2″ in the inseam, but it could be spread throughout the bodice if it’s a jumpsuit or dress.

Overall Thoughts

I am so happy with the fit and fabric combo of this swimsuit! Ideally, I’d love to sew more mix/match combos, but for now, I love the mixing of prints. I really feel like this swim pattern and the adjustments I made are perfect for me and it’ll be hard to try any other pattern. I haven’t found anything I must try yet so, for now at least, I’m going to keep my collection of Cottesloes in a steady mix and match rotation.

Have you made a swimsuit yet? I’d love to hear your tips and favorite patterns below. Thank you so much for reading!