Fancy Pants

According to young "J" his speedo's were no longer cutting it in the cool stakes for his swim squads.  In fact he was being teased by his friends for his very uncool budgie smugglers. We couldn't have that now could we!  He wanted some funky trunks in a bright colour, like his mates.  Well, this Mum does not spend $40 plus on brightly coloured swim trunks when she can make brightly coloured unique swim trunks for much much less.  The design we came up with was a "Skins" style trunk, not the initial brief (excuse the pun), but none the less a desired style by my young aquatic male fashionista.   

On a side note, please excuse the dirty knees.  Sport Goofy spends all of his lunch breaks playing soccer in the playground and his knees are permanently mud stained, to the point that we regularly need to take to them with a scrubbing brush.

The fabric we chose was a nylon lycra with not a huge lycra content but enough for swimwear.  I bought some elastic with an internal cord tie from Lincraft and set to work.  Boys swimming trunk patterns are non existent so I used my tnt self drafted pattern and extended the legs so as to make them finish at the knee.

In the past, I have found my twin needle hems tended to break after repeated wear.  I read on a blog, but am unsure which one, that if I use spun polyester in my bobbin, like I use on my overlocker loopers, this is less likely to happen.  It was certainly worth a try.  I wasn't sure whether my machine would cope with it, but it did.  Only time will tell if it is more durable than regular thread.

To finish the legs, I stitched swimwear elastic in the hems to prevent the legs stretching out and riding up when worn.  In hindsight it could have been a little tighter but I was wary of making them too tight.

And the verdict!   Well, I took a couple of quick photos on my phone before his squad session this afternoon and I have to say, he looks pretty pleased with the results!  Oh, and they passed the swim test as well!

Now, Courteney is not one to miss out!  Last week was New Zealand's High Schools Tournament Week.  She is in her schools first eleven and was away with her school team all week.  Before she left, she asked me to make her a pair of "skins" to wear under her football shorts.  Now, this colour was never going to do for game time because apparently the skins had to match the shorts colour and I can assure you, the shorts are not purple.  My pattern for these was  Style Arc Laura Leggings in size 10.  I simply cut them shorter and hemmed using my twin needle.  

I can't claim that these particular fancy pants helped Courteney's performance but for the record her team came second in the South Island Secondary School Tournament of 15 teams!