We’d planned to take a quick trip to Bear Lake in northern Utah over my week off, so I’d been planning this bikini for a bit. We canceled the trip but I made it anyway as a stress sew, checking in on poor sick Doc in between steps.

This is another pair of  Greenstyle’s Waimea Swim Bottoms–with POCKETS–paired with a Greenstyle Elevate Crop Top modified into a swim top per this tutorial on the Greenstyle blog. (I promise I’m not sponsored by Greenstyle; I just really like their drafting.)  The top fabric is the last of some nice “Olympus athletic” from Fabric.com a few years ago and the bottom fabric (and all swim lining and the rubber elastic) is from The Fabric Fairy.

I’d read somewhere that thin rubber swim elastic (vs. knit or braided elastic) is the trick to making your swimwear feel really professional, and that is correct. This was my first time using it and it really cuts down on bulk on the folded edge. The cover stitch machine continues to pay for itself with topstitching the elastic and finishing the back edge in one step.

I ended up taking my nephew to the pool at the end of last week, when Doc was feeling a little better, so this did get a “vacation” wear after all. It stayed in place on a water slide, in the lazy river, and while swimming after a 10-year-old, and I got a compliment from another lady there on it.

It’s gonna be great when we make it to the lake.