Sewing in the gymnastic leotard world

Here is my foray into a world I would never think I would join, but I thought doing this would immensely help my sewing skills and bring them up to the next level. A friend of mine approached me into making leotards for 2 girls who she loves dearly. So we picked the fabric. Hindsight the orange glued sequin fabric was not what we expected with the thickness of the fabric. Luckily it was only going in 1 part.

We selected this Jalie pattern for the leotard.

To make a long story short, the metallic fabric is a bit of a challenge to sew with for the binding since it was so thick. Also, the sequin fabric for the orange part was also a bit challenging to line up as well.  The tricot stitch truly saved me with these leotards b/c things were pulled and not acting correctly. the elastic was too small then suggested- the metallic fabric was stretching with my feed dogs and did weird things, see below. Tissue paper helped but was frustrating to pull out of the stitches. So I tricot stitched a lot of things. The fabric hung better (which it did not in the beginning). I used almost an entire spool of thread on 2 leotards. For real! I have never done that before.

Then when I sent them on their way and the girls tried them on- they fit perfectly! My jaw dropped when I saw the picture! They really do look like gymnastic leotards. And the girls love them- even better. :)

Even though these were painful to sew and it was difficult, these leotards really built up my sewing skills.  I am beyond thrilled that these leotards turned out so well. Now I am little less intimidated in hard sewing!

Cheers,
Lauren