Seersucker Bathing Suit

 The Sew Beautiful magazine has a fabulous toddler bathing suit in their May/June 2010 issue. It's a toddler two piece suit by Jackie Young. Plus the pattern and instructions was included in the magazine! I believe the pattern size ranged from 6 months - 4T. I thought it was adorable and it looked quick and easy. Of course by the time I saw it, the magazine had already been pulled off the shelf and the new issue was only available. Well, we were going to the beach and there was no time to buy the issue from Martha Pullen's site. There are some great pictures of the bathing suit on their Sew Beautiful blog. There are so many talented sewers out there. This one helped me the most because I could see the side view. I used one of lil' AC blouses to make a pattern for the top. I figured it didn't have to be perfect because there are ties to hold everything in place. Plus, I had purchased some inexpensive seersucker fabric at JoAnn's for $2 a yard. The bathing suits in Sew Beautiful magizine used really good quality seersucker but that can also be a little scratchy, in my opinion. From some of the photos on the blog, it seems clear that all the bathing suits were lined with a softer fabric (maybe cotton). Since my cheap seersucker was a bit thin and would only seem thinner when wet, I decided to just line the suit with the same seersucker. Seemed easier. For the bottoms, I just used a diaper cover pattern I already had. Here's the final product:

 For the ruffle, I used a print which had strawberries and watermelon. I honestly just used only things that I had at home because I was working on it late at night. (Typical, for me!) I only had enough of the mini rick-rack in red but I don't think I'd used the medium size for the bathing suit. The design is busy enough. I also did not have any matching blue thread, so I justed used red. I think it turned out fine. My mom even thought I did it that way on purpose. Nope... just used what I had on hand. Because I lined the suit, I probably used about total of 1 yard of fabric to make a 2T suit. That's about $4 for the suit. Not, bad! The monogram came from a free font website. I believe the font is called Baroque Script. I imported the font using my 4D software. Once the font was in 4D, it was easy to do the embrodiery on my Designer Diamond. I embroidered  the top part and then added the lining so nothing scratchy touched the skin. It was a fun and quick project.

Credo,
Lisa