For those of us in the Southern hemisphere, summer is on its way as we’ve finally left the winter months. Warm weather, sunny days and beach trips are on the horizon and I figured that it’s never too late to start learning something new. As I’m trying to challenge myself with my sewing, I wanted to make some swimwear this year, you can see where this is going right? Well, today I share with you how I went about sewing my very first one piece swim suit.

Sometime last year, I bought some swimwear fabric from Homecraft Textiles in an attempt to push me to learn how to sew swimwear. It sat in my fabric stash until a few weeks back when I was doing a doom scroll. I came across the content creator Costumes by Stormy who made sewing swimwear look like the easiest thing in the world. Her particular sewing vibe is one of chaos, encouragement, fearlessness and positivity which made for a mini binge of all her sewing videos. Stormy’s way of encouraging people to just wing it and give it a go gave me the push to do just that, give it a go. My swimwear fabric was finally pulled out of the cupboard and laid on the floor. The plan was in motion.

Going by Stormy’s lead, I grumaged through my bathers box and found some old BlackMilk (BM) swimwear. Yes, back in the day I was a full blown Sharkie, went to the meet ups and spend most of my money of nylon clothing. This meant that I had a one piece swim suit that I knew fit me pretty decent, that I could use as a template. After a minute of silence on behalf of all past sharkies, I took my unpicker to the seam of my BM swimsuit (it was the C3PO one for those wondering). The BM one piece was layed on my fabric and with my fabric scissors, I started cutting with added seam allowance all around the patter. At the waist of the swimsuit, I added an extra inch as I remember always needing to buy the Long Torso version of BM’s swimsuits once that option became available. This particular swim was before the Long Torso version so adding the extra inch to the waist would make all the difference.

When I had cut out half of the swimsuit (long ways), I folded the half piece over itself and cut out the other half using that as the new template. Stormy says that this method works most of the time, and of course, you can always fix and adjust as you go. With my swimsuit cut out, I knew I wanted to add some lining to help keep the bosoms within their confines. I was so convinced that I had purchased some plain white lining fabric for my swimwear, but could not find it anywhere, which makes me wonder if I even bought it in the first place, or if I had used it for something else. Regardless, I had no lining, so I used the same fabric as the outer layer for the lining. I laid out my outer fabric piece and cut around it to make my lining.

With both my pieces cut, I laid the wrong sides together before folding them up on themselves so the shoulder straps met at the top. Using sewing clips, I pinned the sides of the swimsuit and the straps together. With my overlocker locked and ready to rumble, I ran the sewing straps through the machine, and it went through like a dream. Next, I pinned the necklining with clips and overlocked the rest of the sides.

Turning the swimsuit right side out, I then sewed down the overlocked edge on my normal sewing machine to keep the hem hidden then before I knew it, she was done. On a last minute dash through the sewing stash before I wrapped up, I found some embroidered daisy patterned lace trim which I believe I bought for a long abandoned project. Sage green with daisies has always been one of my favourite motifs so quickly sewing on this floral trim made me fall instantly in love with my first one piece swim suit.

Just like that, with the help of Stormy and lots of internal screaming, I made my very first one piece. When I tried her on, I was so happy with the fit and although she was very tight across the chest (causing my flattening like a pancake), I felt really snug and secure when wearing her. Whilst on a little getaway with my parents, my mum very kindly and to the best of her ability took some photos for me. It was way too hot for any makeup and the wind made my hair an impossible tangle but we had fun mostly just laughing at her yelling out she can’t see me through the screen and me yelling back she needs to look through the view finder and her not knowing what that is and even after setting the camera to show on the back screen she still couldn’t see because it was so bright. Joy.

The swimsuit held up with many days of swimming, snorkelling and other water activities. It was really comfortable to wear to lie on the beach in, or to pair with shorts to go about my day. As I didn’t add extra elastic to the seams, I’m not sure how she will hold up in the long run, but I am hoping to learn to add elastic at a later date.

As I had to use up all my sewing fabric in this particular pattern, I have broken my fabric buying ban to pick up some more swimsuit fabric to keep practicing. Hopefully I will share some progress as I keep making swimwear but all we can do from now is keep learning and just keep swimming.

It’s worth giving an extra thank you to Stormy from Costumes by Stormy on Facebook for her encouragement, humour and realness. Go and check her out if you can!

Please Note: This is not a sponsored post. All opinions and thoughts expressed are solely my own and not influenced in any way. This page contains affiliate links/codes which aids in funding future blog posts. Please don’t feel obliged to use any of my links if you don’t want to.