[sebbie]

I tried taking the bagginess out of the rear of an an old stretched out suit.

Basically this involves creating a rear seam that divides the butt cheeks in a suit that has none. This seam starts at the waistband middle rear (where the tag is just below the elastic, folding over the suit and sewing from the inside of the suit and then goes more concave as you get toward the middle of the rear. I went a couple inches inward at the widest point, then narrower going bact to nothing and ending the seam as you approach the perineum area where the front attaches to the back.

I have a stretch stitch on my machine that is made to use on stretch favrics like Lycra. I kept breaking the thread. The stretch stitch requires that the feed alternate between forward and backward but it leaves essentially a triple- stitch seam, which is nice.

After you get the concave area sewed in, just cut out the fabric outside the stitch. The edges should be serged to prevent unraveling, but I haven't tried that. or I could just run a zig-zag stitch along the cut edge but for the time being it is fine and the fabric is not unraveling.

This is not a perfect fit, and I could take slack out of the suit in other places, possibly even put in a front seam. This suit is rather roomy in front but that is fine especially for sleeping. it certainly looks and feels better than it did. This technique would work for any old suit that seems to have gotten overly loose in the butt. How much you sew out with the concave seam depends on how baggy the suit has gotten.

I also added a new shoe string tie string which was missing entirely from this suit, using the safety pin stunt as shown in the video. I quickly discovered that 40" string is not long enough to tie, so I knotted on a 54 inch string and ended up adding about 6 inches additional from the 40 inch string. If you want a string long enough to drop down loose below your ball level, 60 inches works.

Next up to try: I have some old swim thongs that have gotten all stretched out.