Don't you hate it when this happens?

The alternative title to this post, to use a good old Aussie phrase, is well that would be bloody right!

About a month or so ago I found myself driving to the airport to pick up the husband and was a bit too early due to some unheard of light traffic.  The Remnant Fabric Warehouse happens to be on my route to the airport, so I stopped in to have a look at what they had on offer.  They had such a great range of swimwear fabric for only $9.95/m that I had the crazy idea to make myself a maternity swimsuit.  Mind you I've never made a swimsuit because if there's one garment you want well cut and well made to make sure it's flattering and that it won't fall apart on you while you're wearing it, it would be a swimsuit! And of course I've not made a maternity swimsuit either, but I figure if I could avoid paying $150+ for a maternity swimsuit that I would only use for the next three months then it would be worth a try.

So I picked up this dark grey and watermelon pink fan print fabric which according to the selvage was made for Nookie Beach (a local label) by Publisher Textiles:

Pretty fabric, right? I also picked up some skin coloured lining, swimsuit elastic and some sew in bra cups, all for a good price since the prices at the Remnant Warehouse are generally pretty good.  Only I got an email from them last week informing me that they're having a 25% off everything sale! Since I haven't cut out the fabric yet, I could have just waited a little bit and saved 25% (or more likely bought 25% more fabric instead).  Don't you hate it when you have poor timing?

But it gets worse.... It turned out I didn't have a single swimsuit pattern among my collection of 600 plus patterns, and the itty bitty bikini patterns in the Burda magazine weren't exactly what I wanted.  So a few weeks ago I popped into Spotlight when they were having one of their very frequent 20% off everything sale and picked up Kwik Sew 3416 pattern:

There are hardly any swimsuit patterns available, but amazingly Kwik Sew had quite a few patterns to select from, but I thought this one would be the easiest to adapt for maternity given it has a seam under the bust line.  So with the 20% off and an extra 10% from my VIP membership I paid about $13 for this pattern (yes Kwik Sew patterns are very expensive in Australia).  And in another coincidence in poor timing last week they sent out their latest catalogue advertising 50% off all patterns, and helpfully enclosing a 15% off voucher to boot!

And then a few days ago I popped into an op shop and found not one, but two swimsuit patterns for the grand total of $1.... Sure they are 1980s style, but with a little modification they could be modernised: McCalls 9089 and McCalls 9566, both long out of print.














So after all of these grrrrrrr moments, I thought I had better get started on that swimsuit.  I'm happy to say that my test swimsuit made from some lycra I had in the stash has actually turned out quite well so I'm thinking I might just be able to do this successfully after all.  But the final annoying moment? Queen Bee maternity currently has a sale on maternity swimwear (with free postage in Australia), and I bought a tankini in solid blue for $54 marked down from  $128!!! Oh well, I'm sure I could use two swimsuits given I have a beach holiday coming up soon and just in case mine turns out ordinary.