I am sooo ready for the Summer Holidays! I have been for months weeks.
This time of year is always so stressful getting everything closed up before the end of the school year – and getting everything ready for starting up again in August, so with adding the me-being-sick-for-a-week factor, I really really need this vacation.
We’ll be going to Southern France for a two-week stay in a rented house (with pool) and we are leaving on Friday as soon as the house- chicken- and cat-sitters arrive.
And this is what I’ve made to wear while in France (I am aware that I might need other stuff, like trousers, skirts and tops, too, but I’m planning to spend as much time as possible wearing this):
{My new Pink Tankini top}
I also made two bikini bottoms.
The pattern is from Ottobre Woman Magazine 2 2011. It’s a gathered halterneck tankini top with two kinds of bikini bottoms. It’s not easy finding swimsuit fabric in Denmark. And when you find it, the choices are black, white and neon. My complexion doesn’t work well with neon colours, but I was lucky and found a silvery swim suit fabric, and then some pink-ish dance wear fabric (it’s swim suit fabric, but it’s not treated to withstand the chlorine in the water, and it’s a tiny bit thinner). So I decided I would give it a go and make a pink top with silver lining (!) and silver bottoms. We’ll see how the fabric holds up.
The instructions are – to put it mildly – wordy. When I first read the instructions for sewing the tankini top, they didn’t make sense. But after taking a look at the pattern pieces, everything became more clear, and it went together nicely. The bottoms though, those instructions made no sense to me at first. But I used some instructions from an old panties pattern instead, and then I could actually see what they meant to say in the Ottobre instructions. I did change a few things in the construction method.
Invisible elastic is so much more easy to sew in the flat. So I added the elastic to the leg openings before sewing the side seams – and I just held it taut when sewing the front and the crotch area, and stretched the elastic a bit more for the back. It worked very well!
It’s going to take us about 18 hours to drive there. Some of the time I will be driving, some I will be sleeping, but there should be some knitting time – and I’ve packed several projects to chose from. I am aiming on getting the short-row cardigan for Carla done while in France, other than that – we’ll see.
I don’t know how our internet connection will be, but if it’s any good, I might blog a bit from my Iphone…
See you soon!
