A New Swimsuit for Journey

In the recent "Blue" issue of Sew Beautiful magazine there was a little gingham two-piece swimsuit featured, including a free pattern. I knew it would be adorable on Journey.

I had a piece of turquoise seersucker that I'd been saving for a while. I had enough to make the swim suit as well as a hat. The suits in the magazine and the ones featured on the Sew Beautiful blog all had monograms on the bodice. While I love monograms, I wanted something fun and playful. I found a seahorse on the Embroidery Library website (http://www.emblibrary.com/). I'm on their email list and one of the latest emails was all about 'beachy' patterns. Here's a close up of the seahorse:

I love the combination of turquosise and lime green and naturally Journey needed hot pink, so I combined all those colors on the seahorse.

I needed lime green Ric Rac and guess what - the only store that carried it was Buttons 'n' Bows in Houston! I bought all they had. I looked at Wal-Mart, Hobby Lobby, a quilt store, even JoAnn's!! How frustrating! Buttons 'n' Bows has a lot of nice things, but they're not exactly close to me! I guess I need to plan ahead and order everything online from now on. . .

I changed the pattern/design just a little bit. I tapered the ends of the lower bodice ruffle to match the upper ruffle and I made two ruffles for the the pants, each open to the sides, instead of one that opens to the back. I found that the directions in the magazine were kind of vague, so if you decide to sew it, be sure to read it thoroughly. You have to know how to construct a garment before tackling this, since the instructions are so skimpy. All in all, I really liked the way it turned out.