Hi i'm Wallis and I am one of the patternmakers here at Seamwork.
Today I will be making the Kaye lounge set in to an athletic set for roller skating.
During the pandemic, I decided that I needed to be able to find a new
activity that I could do outside. I used to be a runner and I would run
with uh some local run groups but unfortunately I found that I just really
was not enjoying running with a mask on outside so I decided that I wanted to try to find a new
physical activity that was fun and was also not too strenuous while I was wearing a mask.
The Kaye set is originally meant more for loungewear rather than activewear but I'm
going to show you a few hacks today that I made to the pattern in order to make it a little more
activity friendly. To make my Kaye set I used this athletic knit. I just used a plain black color but
this same knit comes in several different colors, all the links to my materials will be below
in the description box. So I really like this fabric, this particular athletic fabric because
it is 265 gsm which is a pretty hefty weight. I personally prefer to use at least 240 gsm for the
weight of my athletic fabrics that I'm going to be making into any kind of compression bottoms.
This fabric is great for like leggings or compression shorts because it is very opaque
and one of my tips that I have for you is if you are looking at an athletic knit in person,
I like to put my hand underneath the fabric and stretch it out as far as it'll go
and make sure that I cannot see my hands through the fabric so that way I know that I
will have absolutely no wardrobe malfunctions while I'm wearing something made of this.
Then for the elastic I used this really fun leopard print. This elastic is about an inch and
a half wide inch and 3/8 somewhere around there, and it is it is a very good quality elastic. It's
pretty sturdy and it is from an Etsy store called Beyond Trim. Based on my muslin, I decided to add
an inch and a half to the total rise on the front and back just so I could make the shorts a little
higher waisted. I took my straps in half an inch towards center front otherwise known as a narrow
shoulder adjustment. I reduce my shoulder slope by a quarter an inch, my shoulders are pretty square
so this is a typical adjustment for me. I decided to shorten the top one inch just because I knew
that my elastic was really wide I was using for the band. For my Kaye set, I made an extra small top
and graded between the extra small and small sizes at the hips and waist for the shorts.
I made my muslin out of cotton lycra knit scraps that I had in my stash. Keep in mind Kaye is intended
to be more of a casual lounge crop top more than a supportive bra like I've made it into.
If you want more support, I recommend sewing quarter inch elastic into the armhole and
neckline seams. Knit or clear elastic will work but personally I prefer to use knit elastic.
I did not stretch the elastic at all while sewing it into the seam, but if you need extra
support in a sports bra I recommend stretching slightly while you're sewing it into your seam.
I personally prefer to put cups inside of all of my sports bras, I just used some simple little foam
inserts. These are triangular shape, they come in all different kinds of shapes. I believe I ordered
these on Amazon in a pretty large pack for fairly inexpensive and also the nice thing about this
foam is that you can cut it down to a smaller size if you buy ones that are too big and just
serge or zigzag around the edges in order to make them the right size. To add cups to your Kaye, try the
top on before attaching any elastic to the bottom or hemming. Pin your cups in place and sew to the
lining with a zigzag stitch. In other words your cups will be in between your shell fabric and your
lining fabric so they will not be touching your body. For circular cups, I recommend sewing all the
way around but for triangular cups like the one that I used, just sew each of the three points down.
Your fabric choices are also going to make a big difference on how supportive a sports bra can be.
I just used this athletic knit for the shell and the lining of mine but if you're bustier or you
just need more support or want more support, I really recommend also getting some power mesh
and just basting it to your lining and treating that all as one layer. What I learned from sewing
Kaye is that even if you take the time to add in some more hacks and use some extra materials
that really this set probably works best for light to medium activities
such as yoga or roller skating just nothing high impact like running. I just personally don't think
that Kaye is going to provide you enough support since it really wasn't intended for that when
it was drafted. The other thing that I learned is that as I mentioned earlier this elastic is wide
and it's very strong and I didn't really take this into consideration when I was sewing it on to the
the shorts or the top really but the shorts it turns out that um the elastic was super super um
almost like a little too restricting for me so what I ended up doing was letting the waistband
elastic, I wrapped it around a chair at home and left it that way for 12 hours just so that that
way the elastic would start to get stretched out and it feels a lot more comfortable now but
admittedly if I could go back and redo all this I definitely would have given myself a little bit
more ease in the circumference of the elastic. I actually just cut the elastic the exact same size
as the waist on the shorts, so like I said going back I probably would have just added more ease
to the waist on the pattern as well as the elastic so that it can relax a little bit better.
It's definitely got um a lot less give than like a brief elastic would so I might also consider using
a brief elastic or something like that next time. Thanks for following along with my project diary. I
hope this inspires you to maybe try some athletic wear if you never have before or to think about
ways that you can hack patterns that you already own to be more appropriate for athletic wear.
If you have any questions, just leave them down below in the comments and I'll get back to you!
Bye!