Crossing Off The List: Soma Swimsuit

In May of 2014 (oh my, I didn’t realise is was that long ago…) I was a pattern tester for the new TRI Collection for Papercut patterns. I sewed up and posted about the Pneuma Tank and 2 pairs of Anima pants and briefly mentioned photos of the Soma swimsuit would follow when the weather improved.

In the meantime I made three more Pneuma Tanks in one go (these only ever appeared on Instagram) and I’ve wore them to the point where I need to repair one and probably should make some more…

This pattern is great for using up old t-shirts you no longer wear or never wanted to wear…or ones that contain glaring spelling errors that make your eye twitch.

I run in them, I work out in them, they’re comfortable and cool and made by me!

So now it’s 2018 and still no Soma swimsuit photographs. Well that’s not entirely true, I photographed the swimsuit on Scarlett when I sent my pattern testing feedback to Katie.

The Papercut Soma has three variation: a glamorous one piece or two different bikini tops with either a high or mid rise pant.

The one piece swimsuit has a over elasticated back, ballet style cross over front with cut out triangle detailing and an elasticated waist seam to accentuate the waist.

The first bikini variation is of a similar style, with a supportive cross over bust with cut out triangle detailing and a cross over elasticated back fastened with a bikini clip.

The second variation is a bustier style with bust cups for added support, a centre front triangle detail and elastic in the waist seam. There is no back fastening so is comfortable and easy to take on and off.

I made the one piece in a Zimmerman swimsuit lycra purchased from Global Fabrics (now called The Fabric Store) in December 2010.

I bought my fold over elastic (best notion in the world btw) from Made Marion and sacrificed an old black bra for the bra rings.

I had owned my Janome Coverstitich for about 5 months when I began making this so I used it as much as I could for the FOE, at the waist and for the leg openings. For the leg openings I attached the regular elastic with a zig zag stitch first and then folded the hem over and finished it with the coverstitch.

Coverstitching on FOE at center front

Coverstitching on pant leg

I avoided writing this post truly intending to get photos of it on me and then I just never did. And it’s not like I’ve never taken photos in a swimsuit for my blog before! But yeah…

For Christmas 2016 NH and I bought a paddling pool anticipating an amazing summer like the year before. It didn’t happen. So the paddling pool stayed in the box until this Christmas when we set it up and floated and chilled out each afternoon over the holidays. It was the perfect chance to finally get some photos.

Now I can cross this off the list from last post.

If you are at all interested I took that unblogged list and added it to the sidebar – this post crosses two things off, a great start!

THE DEETS:

Pattern –

• Papercut Pneuma Tank, size S
• Papercut Soma Swimsuit, One Piece, size S

Fabric – 

• Various knit fabrics and lycra from The Fabric Warehouse
• Zimmerman swimsuit lycra, $28/m from The Fabric Store, purchased December 2010
• Swimsuit lining from Spotlight
• Bra strapping, fold over elastic and elastic from Made Marion Craft

Other notions – Colo(u)r Run t-shirt, bra rings

Everyone saw “Awwww!” for one year old Harriet

“There’s no limit to how much you’ll know, depending on how far beyond zebra you go.”*

You might have worked out by now that I quite like the Papercut La Sylphide pattern.

😉

(La Sylphide the first, second, third)

Hey guess what?

I made another one! 😉

I was in The Fabric Store when I really shouldn’t have been (my meeting up that end of town finished early so actually it’s my clients fault…) when I saw this cute bolt of zebra printed silk. I picked it up and carried it around for a bit and by my second store lap the chubby little zebras had convinced me I wasn’t leaving without them.

I bought 2 meters along with some dark blue poly-cotton blend. I already knew this was going to be my 4th La Sylphide.

I underlined the dress bodice and lined the skirt with the blue poly-cotton. I kept the side seams free below the waist and hemmed both skirts separately but caught the lining into the button packet at center front.

I “Frenched” the skirt side seams (that’s a sewing term) and we all know French seaming on silk goes better when paired with white wine.

I don’t really need the instructions anymore but I still find hemming is the worst part of this pattern for me, especially with naughty fabric and ALL my versions have been made with naughty fabric! To make it even worse this time I had to do two hems.

TWO HEMS!

So I hung the dress for several weeks before I could be bothered to be extra sure it had fully dropped. Then I had an epiphany and decided to hem the silk with hug-snug.

Then I just turned the dress inside out and pressed the lining hem up just a little bit shorter than the silk and stitched a simple double-fold hem.

I’m really glad I underlined/lined the silk. The poly-cotton is nice and soft to wear and it should help the dress last longer.

I had a lot of help from Harriet for my photoshoot.

She loves being outside with her humans and the Kowhai tree was just starting to flower so that means lots of birds to watch and unsuccessfully stalk.

I chose simple black buttons from Spotlight.

Spot my creepy stalker cat…and I’ll leave you with my failed twirly pictures.

THE DEETS:

Pattern – Papercut La Sylphide, size S

Fabric – Chubby zebra silk and blue poly-cotton from The Fabric Store, Wellington. Buttons from Spotlight, Porirua.

Other notions – Invisible zipper, interfacing

*Dr Seuss

Silk Twill La Sylphide

This will be a short post with more photos than words 😉

This is my third Papercut La Sylphide. I wear my Owl La Sylphide ALL THE TIME, it’s one of my all time favourite makes. My second La Sylphide I hardly ever wear. I did something weird to the button placket, I think I cut if slightly off grain, so it doesn’t sit right. I’m also not sure that the lighter colour combined with diagonals suit me…so I needed to make another and when I saw this silk twill at Fabric-a-Brac I knew exactly what it was destined for.

This time around the fabric was way too narrow even for the reduced skirt width that I left marked from my Owl version so I had to piece on the corners. I cut these, as usual, from the selvedge, so that I could leave them unfinished to reduce seam bulk.

I feel like I’ve written ^^that ^^ in almost every blog post recently 🙂

But it’s a good trick and no one has ever pointed out my pieced on skirt-triangles in the 4 or 5 dresses I’ve done this too 😉

Red buttons!

There’s not much else to say, I really want to make another, I just have to wait for the right fabric to pop up again. It’s nice and swishy, maybe a bit too swishy sometimes for the Wellington wind, but mostly I just LOVE the colour.

Was a bit windy…

Harriet says, “Sew more! MOAR!”

THE DEETS:

Pattern – Papercut Patterns La Sylphide dress, straight size S

Skirt lengthened approx 16cms, full width of skirt pattern piece used.

Fabrics – Silk Twill found at Fabric-a-Brac, $15.00 total, bought 2nd May 2015

The lengths we go to for photos…

A Four-leaf Clover in Rayon

When I saw Kat’s Hummingbirds Clover dress my “err, I like this pattern but not sure if it’s for me” changed to “Ok, I HAVE to make this…like right now!”

Later in the week we caught up in person and I actually got to try her dress on.

Kat cut a small and I squeezed into it no trouble and with a lot less excess fabric at the waist than I expected. So I pushed the pattern up my list and had a dig through my stash. Kat used a Rayon (you need a fabric with good drape) and I had a few options but nothing that was whispering “Clover” to me.

When I popped into Spotlight to buy contrast for the 0 Degrees Bleuet I saw that all the Rayon was discounted.

Good luck right?

Absolutely! So I grabbed this black and white dot print for 30% off.

My lace is from a bag of scraps I bought a while ago from Alison Blane’s studio sale.

I’ll always remember going to that sale because it was only a few days after Wellington was rocked by a several strong earthquakes. Everyone was on edge and fabric shopping seemed like an excellent distraction but the old building she is located in scared me. The elevator was so ancient looking that climbing the stairs to level 3 seemed the safest option and I arrived out of breath but happy to see so much pretty fabric and lace.

I know that sounds totally crazy but it’s funny the things that stay with you right? I always think of that lunchtime shopping mission whenever I look through my bag of pretty lace.

Anyway, back to the dress…I added 20cms to the length and then cut it out during an epic mad “must cut out ALL THE THINGS” session one weekend when I discovered the joys of rotary cutting.

I used to cut out with my scissors and pins and because I find cutting out the most tedious of all sewing tasks I tend to do a big whack of it all in one go. I do love seeing the neat piles of cut projects ready to be sewn and then picking one up to start.

So this was the first time I’d cut out an entire garment with just my rotary cutter. I loved how easy it was and I ended up cutting out six projects all in one go and now you’ll never pry the rotary cutter out of my hands!

Later, when I grabbed the folded fabric to start sewing, I discovered that sometime during my epic cutting session I had managed to chop the point off the top of one of the front pieces.

I really have no idea how it happened! Maybe the fabric was already cut from another piece and I didn’t see the overlap when I refolded or maybe I just cut it off in a moment of distraction.  Anyway, I had no more fabric to re-cut it and no inclination to go out to get more so I ended up piecing it on from some of the scraps…

You totally can’t tell! 😉

After that minor mishap the rest of the dress sewed up no problems at all with typically excellent Papercut instructions and well drafted pieces that lined up perfectly.

I copied Kat and used “Hug Snug” seam binding for my lace seams. It’s kind of like lightweight ribbon that you bind the raw seam edge with. It adds almost no extra bulk, feels silky smooth and adds a pretty pop of colour inside. You can also curve it with steam, just like bias.

My “Hug Snug” is the same colour as Kat’s because that’s where I got it 😉 She bought quite a lot of it and gave me a nice long length to try out.

After my dress was mostly finished I tried it on and was a bit disappointed by how it looked. I didn’t own any belts that suited it so I made myself hang it back up and reserved judgement until I went shopping.

I’m happy to say that I felt much better wearing it with a belt but even more so after I chopped the bottom off.

If it’s too long this dress can easily turn frumpy so I chopped off most of the extra length I added in two steps, firstly aiming for knee length by cutting just below the knee.

When you remove a lot of extra fabric weight in a bias skirt the hem will often bounce up higher than expected. Once it was settled I cut a second smaller section off to my final length.

I haven’t been feeling particularly photogenic lately and so I’ve not really liked any photos of my new makes. However since I made poor Sandra take photos of me in the same dress on two separate occasions I decided I’d just get a little funky with the photos and get this blog draft finally posted!

I still wasn’t sure about the dress after the first couple of wears and I came pretty close to taking it right in and sticking an invisible zipper in the side but now after several wears I do really love it. It’s very comfy but also flattering and a fun dress to wear during winter with some coloured tights to cheer you up 😉

Here it is sans crazy legs for comparison:

THE DEETS:

Pattern – Papercut Clover Dress by Brooke Tyson, size S

Added 20cms to the length, then chopped most of it back off 😉

Fabrics – Rayon from Spotlight Porirua, lace off-cut from Alison Blane.