First off: things have been a little nuts around the Esplin household. I'm working on a bunch of projects that I can't wait to share with you. They have to wait at least until mid-August, though. You better believe Jill & I are cooking up a batch of killer DIY awesomeness for you!!

the girl in the second drawing totally has a grimace on her face.

I've been wanting to make this cover-up for some time, so I've been through a lot of design iterations in the process. Above are a couple of rough sketches from my sketchbook. I decided the cover-up would look less "home project-y" with a racerback than with a straight neckline & straps. This thing took me forever to construct, but I learned a LOT along the way. I drafted this coverup from scratch using sketches, pins & my dress form. I'm really happy with how it turned out, I think I need to dye it an ombre really soon here. Anyone want to have a dyeing party next week? Seriously, next Tuesday night come over to my house with a couple of things to dye & we'll go to town. Let me know if you're in. Above is a little during construction shot. You can see, I started out with straight lines that I cut to the shape I wanted. I figured out a system to get uniform pintucks without spending too much time on them. That was pretty tedious, but getting the curves on the arm, racerback & necklines took forever. The curve on the bottom took even longer. The coverup started out 6 inches longer than it ended up. I kept cutting & cutting & cutting in order to get the perfect curve. At the very end I figured out the best way to get a uniform curve all the way along  the bottom. Too bad I discovered it 6 inches too late. It's okay though. It's a cover up. It doesn't really need to cover much. I added pearl snaps to the front which were sort of a pain to put in. My thumbs & fore fingers were throbbing afterward, but at least I didn't have to sew buttons & button holes. I hate sewing buttons. I was going to line the inside of the cover-up in order to finish the edges & do a curved hem, but by the time I got the perfect curve along the end, I decided to go with biased tape. It was by far the easiest finishing option. I've always hated putting on biased tape, but after reading Diana's tutorial for sewing biased tape the right way, I don't mind it much at all. Swimsuit provided by Lime Ricki Swimwear. Read more about the swimsuit here.