The Chequered Flag

Last week young J competed in his first ever school swimming sports.  He has been waiting for over four years for this particular experience as his school doesn't have years 0-4 competing.  The weekend before, he requested some new swimming togs.  On closer inspection of his current ones, this was a necessity and not a whim, so I laid out my stash and asked him to pick a colour combination.  His initial choice was red with the black and white check but after frustratingly mucking up the cutting he ended up with his second choice of orange.  The brief was that the shorts needed to be bright and the brighter the better.  I think I got this right.  The second brief was, he needed elastic with a tie...check.  I already had some elastic from Lincraft with a tie woven into the elastic.  Because this orange is prone to fading and white can be embarrassingly see through, I lined the entire suit with white nylon lycra.   Once again, I used my own pattern, drafted off an old pair.   I was going to twin needle the hem but opted instead of two single lines of stitching, in case one line gave way.

I volunteered to marshall on the day, so these pictures are courtesy of my husband.

The shorts were a success.  He even told his teacher who awarded him the award for the best home made swimming costume and a swimming genius!  I am not sure what all of that means, but he came home pretty happy!

Next week he gets to do it all again at the North West School's   zones swimming sports. (J is the little fish in the closest lane in the above photo).