The Beta Bikini

I'm back from my holidays and ready to show you my Bombshell Bikini experiment. Since I had no swimwear whatsoever before going on holidays I thought it would be wise to have a bikini in addition to the Bombshell Swimsuit I had already made. With only a couple of stressful days to spare before going on holidays to our family cabin in Norway, I whipped up the bikini bottom from the Bombshell pattern (easy) and a matching bikini top (not so easy).

I didn't have a bikini pattern and even if I had bought one last minute I was afraid it wouldn't have fit and there was no time to sew several toiles. So, I decided to cut apart an old bra, which still fit me but had started to wear out at the seams and the elastic. 

I cut apart half the bra and copied the carefully salvaged pieces onto pattern paper to create my own bra pattern. I used the other side of the bra as a sewing reference, since I had never sewn any lingerie before and was unsure about the proper construction. 

I made a full bra in white swimwear fabric and underlined the bra cup pieces and the bridge between the cups with poly organza to stop it from stretching but without adding any weight. Then I sewed an underwire channel and inserted the underwire from the salvaged bra.

Then I created a new pattern piece in the purple swimwear fabric that I draped across the bust, so it could be gathered at the center front and then covered by a tab. I then added swimwear elastic at all of the edges at which my bra also had elastic and constructed straps, which I gave extra stability with elastic sewn into them.

At the back the bikini closes with a swimwear closing.

In the photos the bikini looks fine but unfortunately my inexperience in swimwear construction and lack of special notions didn't make for the most long-lasting and quality bikini. 

The problems are that the fabric is bunching up in the cups, the elastic is a little weak under the bust and most annoyingly the underwire is already poking out at one cup - probably because I did not make my channels with underwire channeling, but just used the lycra fabric. Not a good idea.

Some of these issues can be tweaked and a little work on it could improve my bikini and make it wearable for another season. But I don't think I'll bother. I'll just make another bikini top for next season using my experience from making this one. This will remain the beta version.

All in all I'm happy that I was able to sew a wearable bikini that I got very good use of in my holidays. The weather was perfect this year!

Have you had any luck making a bikini top? Are there any patterns or construction techniques that you can recommend?