DIY From Halter to Cross-Back

Ever since I got pregnant with Smasher, I cannot STAND having things on my neck. Turtlenecks, long hair, heavy necklaces, or halter tops. They make me nauseous and give me a headache within 15 minutes. 

As you can imagine, combined with my now-saggy post-nursing bewbs, this makes bathing suit shopping EXCRUCIATING. Every thing that isn't a halter, gives no support, or if it DOES have support, it looks like a bra. 

My pre-pregnancy bathing suits, I have discovered, are ALL halters. So I decided to see if I can convert my old halter into a cross-back top. Not only was it a success, it was SUPER simple!

My results: 

Ignore my not-bikini-readiness, please. I'm working on that.

The top had my girls hanging a bit low and wide, so I also added a quick (supposedly) seam up the front to close them in just a bit. I folded the bikini in half, right sides facing, then put a seam up the front of the cups perpendicular to the bottom band. If your bathing suit is fairly thin, you should be able to do this on your sewing machine, but if it is thick, you may want to just hand sew it. I wound up having to do both, because my machine didn't want to stitch through the thickest part where the cups met the band. Then I just trimmed the seam allowance (swimsuit fabric doesn't ravel, so you don't have to  secure the allowance).

Please also ignore my horrendous hand-stitching. 

Now for the Cross-back. My suits straps were long enough to just stretch down and cross, but if yours are not, you can just make some quick new straps from corresponding swimsuit fabric and attach those. 

You can either put on your suit and have a friend cross the straps in the back and pin them for you, or you can pin them first with safety pins and try the top on. You want to stretch the straps when you pull them down, because swimsuits are supposed to stretch to fit your body and they wont support the girls if you don't stretch them any. Just don't stretch the straps to the max or they will pull up your bottom strap in the back and look a bit funky. You don't have to make the straps match, just find a position you like. Then pick whichever strap you like best and remove the pin or pins from the other strap.

Pull off your suit and mark the shoulder strap and the bottom strap you liked with pins at the inside of where they intersect. Put the pins in each strap separately. Remove the pin that had them connected together. It doesn't have to be perfect, the stretch fabric makes this project very forgiving.

See how the pins follow the inside edges of the other straps?

Then, separate the pinned straps and fold the top in half. Line up the cups and bottom straps together evenly and insert a pin in the remaining strap at the same distance from the cups as the pin you already have marked. Repeat for shoulder straps.

Then, lay out your top flat and cross your shoulder straps. Match the meeting points of the pins with the shoulder straps to the inside of the bottom straps, and pin each shoulder strap to its corresponding bottom strap.

Sew straps together with a box, crossing the insides of the box to make an "X". NOTE: If you're doing this with a string bikini, it may be easier just to hand-sew this part. You don't have to make the box and X, just make sure the straps are secure.

Then try it on, and if you like it, trim the ends of the shoulder straps. And, voila! You now have a wonderfully comfortable cross-back bikini top!