My Final Garment

I was very happy and relieved when I finally finished my final garment and everything worked out the way I wanted it to.

The front ended up having a wider opening than I first expected but I like it a lot more as it is a tiny bit more revealing. I think that if I only had a small split it would look like it wasn’t meant to be there.

I very much like the back how the straps are far apart and are leaving the back open. I couldn’t decide how many eyelets to put in the back for the lace up. I decided to keep it more open and only put 5 eyelets on each side rather than a lot and covering the back with the lace up.

I think that the rouching is very flattering on the body and it turned out a lot better in the black jersey than the brown jersey.

I am very pleased with how my swimsuit turned out. I particularly love the back detail of my swimsuit.

Pattern and Toile

I started making a flat pattern first but found it difficult to know where to make the design lines. I decided it was easiest to pin calico to the mannequin and draw my design onto it then transfer it to a flat pattern. This worked out a lot better and I could see how the garment would look. I also got to experiment with where the straps were going to go on the back.

This was how I came up with the shaping and style lines of the swimsuit

My flat pattern pieces. I also cut strips of the fabric to be gathered up for the rouching panels and strips for the binding.

When I made my toile and fitted it on the mannequin I only had minor fitting changes which was a relief. But I had to decide how to finish off the edges. This was difficult with the rouching as I didn’t want to lose any width off the straps. We decided on using elastic binding.

I had never used this before and when I first used it I didn’t realise it needed to be stretched onto the garment so the elastic went all bubbly and wasn’t right at all. I had to experiment a lot with this as I had never used it before. I was practising with the TAFE’s white elastic but it was old and wasn’t working as well as it was meant to. When I purchased some of my own black elastic it had a lot better stretch and was easier to attach.

I was very happy with the fitting of my toile and liked how it was coming along.

Experimenting and Problems...

This is my experimenting on the binding machine with the brown jersey which was a bit thicker than the black wool jersey

I first experienced problems with the binding machine. After I decided on what size I wanted the eyelets to be I had to make the binding the right width so they would fit nicely. I had problems with the binding not catching on the underneath side of the garment.

I felt I had fixed the problem but when I did a sample on the black fabric it was not fixed. The black wool jersey was finer and had more stretch than the brown fabric we were using for experimenting so it wasn’t catching in right on the underneath side.

I had to do many experiments with the binding against plain fabric and also with the rouching.

I wasn’t sure if the eyelets were going to go through the thickness of the binding and rouching so I had to experiment with that also. The eyelets were sometimes pulling away from the fabric but all in all it seemed to work out fine.

When first attaching the eyelets I accidentally pierced the stitch line when piercing the hole which meant the overlocking stitch on the back would start to unravel. This was a good thing to learn to know not to make this mistake on the final.

The eyelets in the black binding.

Inspiration

"I can't swim wearing more stuff than you hang on a clothesline." Annette Kellerman

I used this quote from Annette Kellerman as a my main source of information. Her thoughts on swimsuits were that the female body shouldn't be covered up and hidden away from the world. The swimsuit should emphasis the woman's body.

This is interpreted in my design through the front being quiet modest with only showing a slight bit of chest at the front but keeping one shoulder bare at the same time. By keeping the front covered I could show more of the back and have that as my main feature.

Inspiration also came from the corset and how this cinched in a women's waistline and showed off her curves. By using the same theory of showing off a women's waistline the sweeping panel of rouching across the front emphasises the waist line

I liked the fun loving nature of this image and translated it into my design. It is a flirty design with the curves of the lace up back and not being so straight edged.

I love all the swirls in this image and translated them into the sweeping panel across the front of the swimsuit and by having the lace up panel in the back of the garment going to the side instead of straight down. This also led to the straps at the back sweeping across the body.

I was tossing up between two designs but both involved intricate back detail. I worked on both of them and exhausted all my design ideas.

This is the design I finally decided on!