Reply To: Butterick 6090 swimsuit sewing pattern

[the_professors_assistantKeymaster]

Hmmm….it seems the difference between a dd and g cup is 2″. I tried pulling up the pattern so I can take a look and it seems like this one is discontinued but from what I can see, it looks like the bathing suit has princess seams (?) I don’t know if this will work, but this is where I would start…use the pivot method on our site to increase the bust but I would add it to the side front pattern piece only, adding a 1/2″ to the bustline area of side seam and front/side seam of this pattern. Therefore, in theory, you’ll be adding 2″ total to the front of the bathing suit. (definitely, make a muslin with cheaper bathing suit material though to see if you need to tweak this for a better fit.)
I’ve never made bathing suit cups before but I imagine you can make your own. I know that JoAnn’s sells foam by the yard but I don’t know if their thinnest foam would be thin enough. I wouldn’t imagine you wouldn’t want something thicker than 1/8″ but it doesn’t hurt to look. You might have to sew a seam of some kind to give the cup shape and worse comes to worse, if you have an old bra you don’t mind sacrificing, you can also use the cups in that as well for your new bathing suit.
Good luck! 🙂