Skirt Tankini Tutorial - Sewing (3)

The final post on the Tankini tutorial.  

Read the Part 1 on Pattern and Part 2 on Cutting first. 

Bodice

1) Pin the front and back bodice, Right side facing, along the side seams.  As I'm using a ruffle fabric, do remember to match the seams/ruffles. Pins as many as you like so that it will not shift out when you sew.

2) Using a stretch needle and increase your stitch length slightly, sew the side seams together.  You can serge the seams for a neater finish.

Skirt

1) Pin the side seams of the skirt, Right side facing, together. Try to align the ruffles at the side. Sew.

2) As I've cut the skirt using the full width of the fabric, I need to do some gathering to fit the skirt to the bodice. Using the widest stitch length (4 on my machine) and longer tension (8 on my machine), I sew a row of stitches near the waistline of the skirt. This will automatically gather my skirt. Leaving a long thread after my last stitch, I cut off the thread and use the leftover thread to adjust the skirt width to fit the bodice. 

Sewing the skirt to the bodice

1) Position the bodice and the skirt like so. With the front bodice facing down, Right side face out and the skirt facing up, Right Side face in.

sorry, this is the pic of skirt before I sew the gather

2) Pin the skirt to the waistline of the bodice, matching the side seams as close as possible. Be care to ensure that your ruffles stays in same direction too. 

 3) To allow for stretch, I use a zig zag stitch to attach the skirt to the bodice.  Sew all around the skirt waistline.

4) Pull out the gathering stitches that you've sewn earlier so that only the final zig zag stitch remain.

5) Flip to the Right Side and you have your tankini with attached skirt.

Bottom Pantie

1) Place the ruffle, Right Side face up, to the back pantie (right side face up). Pin the sides and baste it using the biggest stitch.

2) Then, place the back pantie over the front pantie, align the sides, with Right Side facing each other.  Sew the side seams together. You can serge the seams if you like.

3) Sew the crotch together. I actually sew the crotch Wrong side facing and then flip it out and sew again to encase the raw edges, similar to that of a french seams. I think it will be more comfortable this way. 

4) Sew the elastic band to the leg area using the tutorial from Creative chick at play or Zaaberry. Just remember to keep the elastic about 1" shorter than the width of your leg opening. Pin the elastic to the edge of the opening so that the elastic lay flat for the front part but slightly stretch in the back portion. Using zig zag stitch to attach elastic to the leg opening and then fold over the elastic so that it is hidden and use the Stretch Twin needle (note: It's STRETCH twin needle) and finish the leg opening.

5) for the waistband, I use 2 methods to finish up both pantie so you can see which one your prefer. For the little sister, I fold over the waistline and sew it all around, leaving a 1" gap to insert the elastic. I've used a 1" elastic for the little sister.  For the big sister, I use the same method as the leg opening and sew up using the thin 3/8" elastic.

front

back

Straps

1) To encase the raw edge on the top of the bodice, cut a piece of lycra, 2" wide and attach to the front, Right side facing together. Sew.

2) Cut a piece of elastic same length as your strap and sew it on using zig zag stitches. Then, flip the lycra to cover the elastic and fold over to the wrong side. Using Stretch twin needle, sew the strap to cover the edge.  [Zaaberry's tutorial has more pictorial explanation]

2) Sew the strap on with the elastic, following zaaberry's tutorial.  For the 2T, I use a shorter strap like 38" and the 7T I use 46". You can use longer strap and then cut accordingly but make sure that the elastic encased in the straps are slightly longer than the strap. I also crossed the strap behind so that it will not slip off so easily.

The final version for Big Sister.

Little sister's version

The back view

Can you see that she enjoys her new Tankini?

That's all folks!

I'll be most grateful if you can share with me your finished tankini.

Let me know if my instruction is not clear.

Skirt Tankini Tutorial - Cutting (2)

                                                                                             

Next up, I'll be touching on the Cutting.
If you have not read my previous post on Pattern, click here.

Please read all the instruction before cutting out!

As I'm using a ruffle fabric, I need to be careful that the ruffles all face in one direction. Place the Right side facing down, make sure that the ruffles are laid down in one direction.

Front Bodice

1) Then, lay the pattern piece on the wrong side and trace out. As I'm using the ruffle fabric, I decided to trace both side instead of placing it on fold so that I've better control over the alignment of the ruffles.

2) Then trace in the seams allowance, all around except the line that you are suppose to cut on fold. (Note, if you have added in the seam allowance earlier on the pattern, you don't need to do this step)

3) Flip the pattern piece to the wrong side and place it on the fold line and trace the other half of the pattern.

4) Add in the seams allowance and you have the full bodice pieces.

5) Cut them out carefully and you have your Front bodice piece.

Do the same for the back bodice.

Skirt
1) For the skirt, I didn't make any pattern piece since it is a rectangle. I also use the full width of the fabric.  First, fold the ruffle fabric, wrong side together, align the ruffles and place down.  Measure the length that you want, flip up the excess ruffles on top, and make a marking. You need to have some seam allowance on top as you will need to sew it to the bodice later.  I left the bottom as it is as the ruffle makes a nice finish.

2) Then, pin along the top so that you can cut the ruffle evenly. 

Bottom/pantie
1) Trace and cut the pantie. Remember to add seam allowance if you have not done so on the pattern.

Big sister's version

baby sister's version (from Dana's diaper cover)

2) I also added some ruffles so that the pantie will look more cute. Just eye ball the length that you need with your paper pattern and cut out the desired width.

Lining

As my ruffle is quite thin, I decided to line my front and back bodice, as well as the pantie (only the big sister). 

Before I sew the swim suit, I pin the front ruffle and the front lining pieces together, Wrong Side Facing. Use as much pins as you like.  Then, sew basting stitch all around except for the bottom. Do the same for the back bodice and the pantie.

If i'm not using a ruffle fabric, I will use my serger but i'm worried that that ruffles will be pulled along by the serger and I'll not be able to match the seams later.

That's all for the cutting, come back to the last post on sewing up the swim suit!

Skirt Tankini Tutorial - Pattern (1)

This is going to be a long post so I'm breaking it into 3 parts -
1) Pattern
2) Cutting
3) Sewing

Before I start, I would like to point you to the some of the many resources that I've got on blogland which had helped me greatly in sewing this up.

Creative chicks swimsuit tips which I find my useful tips on sewing the elastic and different kinds of swimsuit design that we can use.

Zaaberry's Swimsuit Tutorial is very informative as she goes step by step on how to sew a one-piece swimsuit for her girl. She included a pattern too.

Dana's tutorial on Swim wear sew along has some helpful tips and I use her tutorial on diaper cover.

You can read up and decide for yourself which style to sew up and then jump in the tutorials from these sites.  If you like my tankini with attached skirt, read on to see how I do it.

Get these supplies ready before you sew:

1) stretch needle

2) stretch twin needle

3) swimsuit elastic (the regular woven 3/8" elastic I got says for "swimwear" so I just use it)

4) swimwear fabric like lycra - I got these from the shops at Chinatown.

1/2 yard lycra in skin tone for the lining. 1 yard of black polka dots   

3/4 yard of pink ruffle lycra

Needles

My twin needle broke twice so I had to break the sewing mojo during the KCWC to buy more! Spotlight carry it for $9.95 each so I was quite hesitant to get more. But, the good news is I found a local sewing shop that carries all kinds of sewing needles and sewing foots, at very affordable price! If you are interested, let me know and I can share the address with you. Bought twin needles there at $6.20 a piece!

Why Tankini with attached skirt? 

Like I said in my last post, I was not allowed to sew the one piece swim wear since my girl refused to wear them. She also didn't like the black polka dots lycra that I bought for her and instead prefer the pink ruffle one that I had plan to use it for the younger sister. Since I only got 3/4 yard, I have to plan really accurately in order not to waste it. The yellow ruffle tankini that Dana made for her girl is cute but my girl prefer to cover her butt. I wanted the tankini to have some shape so that it don't float up when she jump into the water so it had to be quite tapered and flare a little at the hip.

Pattern
You can either trace an existing swim suit that you have to get the basic bodice or download the free pattern from Zaaberry's 5T one-piece swim suit and grade up/down accordingly.  I used both since I'm sewing up for 2 sizes - 7T and 2T.  Let me explain further below.

1) I printed the 5T pattern from Zaaberry and decided that it will work if I add seam allowance and maybe lengthen the bodice since my 7 year old is skinny.  As I want the pantie to be separate from the main tankini, I cut off about 1" below the waistline.  You can make a rough estimate here by measuring your kids.  I cut a slope downwards as I want my tankini to shape slightly longer in the middle. 

2) For the tankini bottom (the part that you cut off, place a piece of paper behind and level up the waistline so that it is straight instead of sloping down. Do this for both the front and back piece.

3) I decided to go for a continuous tankini bottom as recommended by Emily from Creative Chicks.  You can refer to her tutorial for the details.  See below on how I tape the front and back pantie pattern together at the crotch area. For my 2T, I use Dana's diaper cover as a guide instead since she is still a cute baby!

3) For the skirt, I cut a rectangle. Just estimate the width by measuring the width of the bodice X 2 for front and back, and add seam allowance. The lenght is up to you. For my 7T, I use 7" and my 2T, I use 5".

Seam Allowance

If you are following my method or tracing from existing swim suit, please remember to include Seam allowance (except for the folded part) as you will need to insert elastic band and fold in the fabric later. I use 1/2" seam allowance for all so that I've more allowance to work with.

That's it for pattern and will talk about the cutting in next post.