I made a Tall Contoured Front Plain Tummy version, fully lined with a shelf bra, in black with contrast teal for the centre front panels and the shoulder straps. I am 5'9" with a long torso so I cut a size 16 widthwise and an 18 lengthwise. The fit is very good and it is comfortable - I wore it to the pool for the first time today and swam my lengths as normal.
I found the instructions a little confusing. I had to look very closely at the cutting layouts to work out which pattern pieces to use for the main fabric and the lining - they are different. A table or list would have been helpful.
Generally I find instructions with drawings rather than photos easier to interpret - these have photos and some of the fabric used is patterned - why?
The trickiest bit of actual sewing was the neck opening. I have no idea why the elastic across the front is sewn in 2 pieces??? I also found it tricky to get the right angled corners to look nice. I got there in the end but there was quite a bit of swearing and unpicking.
I had the pattern printed A0 including the sheet with the elastic measurements on it. The lengths to cut are also in a table on p 12 of the instructions so you don't really need to print that sheet at all. Especially as I could not for the life of me get the marked points on the elastic to line up with the notches on the armholes and legholes of the suit as instructed - so ended up quartering the elastic and the openings and everything came out fine. I won't bother trying to use those marks again. Something is adrift somewhere - at one point the length of the elastic was longer than the part of the hole it was to be attached to which cannot be right.
Definitely not a beginner pattern. However as the end result is so good I plan to make more - I have some navy blue fabric already cut out to make a solid coloured one next and another time, if fabric in the stash permits, I plan to try out the ruched front panel.
