Papercut Soma swimsuit review plus a guest visit from the Cottesloe

I had always planned to make another Soma Swimsuit (available here).  My first run through was in 2017 and it appears, shockingly, that I forgot to blog about it.  Gosh so much potential whinging, wasted!!  Also it seems lately that Papercut are taking many of their older patterns out of print as they no longer have this on their website.  It seems to be available by some stockists.

I made a size XS, and the fit was good. 

The idea on a remake: I wanted to make another suit and from that, measure the gaps and redraft pieces to basically replace all the fold over elastic and bra strapping (I'm not sure why I had to make another one to do this, but that was the idea.)  I bought this fabric something like 2 years ago with this pattern in mind, but couldn't quite settle on a background colour.  I wear my other version of this suit quite a bit because it has a back clasp and I need to take my suits off in a carpark with cold fingers, and so I finally gathered the bits and committed. 

While it does come together relatively quickly, this is not a fun sew.  The bottom chest FOE struggles to reach over the layers (I managed to use extra wide stuff on my first suit, but on this one I had to really stretch it to cover.)  There are spots on the sides where you have five relatively shifty layers that you have to sew, and my machine behaved accordingly (thread nests and broken needles.)  I made it worse by sewing the pants outer layer together inside out and I had to give up and just cut a new one, I couldn't break the overlocking and salvage the pieces.  (Luckily I have a huge piece of this star fabric!)  I didn't follow the instructions for the bottoms this time around - you are meant to use swimsuit elastic and fold over twice.  I overlocked everything together cleanly then added a waistband instead. 

This suit also uses a bunch of bra strapping.  I never have much bra strapping, and definitely not all in one practical colour, so in both of these suits, half of my bra strapping is, er, bra channelling, of which I have a strange, massive stash. 

I recall feeling the same way about my first version: if you don't look too carefully at the insides, it's totally serviceable!  Since I know it will go into high rotation in my surfing wardrobe, I'm happy.  But the idea of spending more time with this pattern, even to redraft away the annoying bits, is becoming less interesting as I have discovered the Cottesloe swimsuit pattern, which takes an hour to make including cutting, is totally adorable, and honestly I would prefer to just make a simple suit these days than faff around creating something crazy.  I have made 2 Cottesloes and I plan to retrofit them with swimsuit clasps.  I will also probably make 2 more because I have way too much swimsuit fabric. 

After seeing that there are nearly no reviews of this swimsuit in rotation, I sighed a great sigh of sadness as I really didn't plan in life to be a swimsuit model, and committed to some IRL photos.  I'm going to swallow up all the defensive things here and just say you can tell which suit I feel the best in:

 

The first (black) version was thrifted from some polyester top, with heavyweight black swimsuit lining.  It's held up pretty well in the 4 years since I made it, but really it's only gotten into heavy wardrobe rotation in the past year.  

The bra strapping can occasionally be annoying on the sides as it comes around to the back clasp, and on the front side where it reaches into my armpit a bit.  The crossover front is a feature I quite like despite the narrow FOE holding it together.  It also hides ok under clothes which is good as sometimes I spend a lot of time checking for surf and then give up and go grocery shopping instead. 

The dart on the front does create a pointy boob shape, and as you can see, my white bottoms with the added on waistband are tighter than using elastic. 

 

Since the Cottesloe has snuck in here:  I cut a size 4 in the Cottesloe, and I only used my overlocker - cut a lining exactly the same and sewed them together, flipped right side out then added the bands - for both top and bottom (learn from me and DON'T forget to burrito the top!!)  I care not at all that my lining slips out just a tiny bit - I used actual lining fabric on the jungle print because I had it handy, and I think using swimsuit material makes it a bit firmer and probably wouldn't do that. 

 

Go forth and make your own swimwear, and strut that stuff unapologetically!