>>Would you mind sharing what you did for bathing suits? I’ve been looking at various patterns.<<
A couple of years ago I bought patterns in the girls and ladies sizes from the following company – http://www.modestswimwearsolutions.com/. I looked at several different patterns but liked this one best, because they looked nice and for the ease of sewing. It’s basically a dress made of swimming suit material with leggings underneath. I made three suits for the girls and one for myself (though I was 6 months pregnant at the time so I adapted it accordingly). I also liked that the patterns were made with the option of several sleeve lengths and several legging lengths – I made 3/4 length sleeves with leggings that just covered the knee but didn’t stick out under the dress.
I bought a the swimsuit material on ebay, and including the cost of the materials and patterns, it was under $20 per suit. (And I still have enough material left to make a couple more suits, which will essentially be free.)
Though everyone said how easy this was to sew, there was one part of it that I found challenging – there’s a V where the top part of the dress and bottom part connect, and I had trouble getting it to lay smoothly. I’m far from a professional seamstress but can handle basic stuff without too much trouble and kept wondering as I was making these how so many people who said they didn’t know how to sew could do this while I was struggling with it. I took it apart several times and redid it, and then changed the design for later suits so I wouldn’t have the problem. I still wonder if it was something obvious that I did wrong to cause that difficulty.
Our family likes to do outings and activities together, but as the kids get older, modesty between parents and siblings becomes an issue. So if we found a private part of a beach or secluded lake, the girls would wear long t-shirts over their bathing suits, which I didn’t find a good solution. Wet t-shirts get heavy and I don’t think they’re safe to swim in. Enter the solution – modest bathing suits.
We used these on our yearly camping trip right after I made them, and they were wonderful! We went tubing at a private swimming hole in West Virginia, and went swimming at a thermal lake where there were others except for our family. They were comfortable, modest, and very convenient, since we could wear them on a hike, jump into the water, and keep them on for the hike back.
For the younger boys, I bought wetsuit style bathing suits from cwdkids.com when they were half price (I just bought three more since I was missing the sizes I need for ds3 and ds22 months). They are comfortable and now the little ones have been running around in them all day long – ds22 months in particular loves his – he brings it to me every time he needs to get dressed and keeps it on. This is a big deal since he’s been going through a stage of pulling all his clothes off!
I need to make some more suits for the girls since I discovered this year that they’ve outgrown the ones I made. Dd8 can fit into the suit I made for dd12 and I’ll just have to shorten it, but the older two girls need new ones altogether. I took apart my maternity suit so I can use the material to make a new suit, I’m going to take apart dd14’s suit and I have extra material from the original batch that I bought, so I should have enough to make three new suits. I’m thinking of changing the pattern and making a top with a skirt/legging one piece combo, because it will be more flattering than dresses and then I can avoid that problem that I had last time.
Avivah
Unfortunately, I can’t see anything here…
Very strange. Okay, I’ll have to rewrite the post – it seems to have disappeared.
It’s good to know that that pattern can be modified. It was one of the ones I was looking at. Did you do anything to raise the neckline?
I did raise the neckline – for one suit I made it a little smaller all around than I would have liked and for one I didn’t initially raise it enough and had to redo it. I think it’s better to error on the side of too high because then it can be cut down. But the pattern doesn’t have adjustments to the neckline, just the sleeves, skirt length, and legging length.
(Btw, Meg, did you come to this blog via a relative? Or would I know you under a different posting name from somewhere else?)
How do you sew the bathing suit material? I find even t-shirt material to be hard to sew because of stretchiness…
It’s actually very easy – you use a zigzag stitch.
I honestly don’t remember where I came across this blog. I’m not frum (not even Jewish actually), but my degree is in Judaic studies.
I run an online modest clothing community (http://community.livejournal.com/modest_style), and some of our Jewish members were wondering if the Modest Swimwear Solutions pattern could be made tznius. I’m going to pass your blog post onto them, if that’s alright?
mamamoomoo
Avivah is right; you can use a zig-zag stitch to sew knit fabrics. Most sewing factories use a serger that sews a seam using 4 threads, but those are out of the reach of most home sewers.
Zig-zaging on knits can still be a bit annoying to learn, so you might want to practice on some scraps before moving on to sewing a garment.
Thanks for introducing yourself, Meg, and for chiming in!
>>I’m going to pass your blog post onto them, if that’s alright?<< Of course, feel free send them here to read my post on the swimsuits! Or if you'd rather just share my post, that's fine, too, but I'd appreciate if you let them know that it was from my blog, rather than an anonymous person.
I linked to your blog so people could read the instructions themselves! This is the post. It is members-locked, so you’ll have to join the community to read it, though.
http://community.livejournal.com/modest_style/148951.html
Here’s the part about you.
“-A frum blogger has successfully modified the Modest Swimwear Solutions pattern to be tznius. She doesn’t have pictures, but she does explain on her site her experience making and modifying the pattern.”
The original text has hyperlinks to your site and Modest Swimwear Solutions.
I also have that suit, and I had mine made rather than sewing it myself. The young lady (a former homeschooler 🙂 who runs the home business exchanged many emails with me as I worked with her to raise the neckline, lengthen the skirt, find fabric colors that weren’t see-through, etc. It was a very satisfying experience.
Since then, several other companies have come on the market, so there is quite a range of options.
Here’s one that looked interesting. They seem to have a lot of Israeli customers:
http://hydrochic.com/index.html
The site seems to have moved:
http://www.simply-modest.com/