Comfy undies

Yep, this post is about undies. Comfy ones.

A couple of times, I’ve played around with making my own underwear. The last time was late last year, when I drafted up a pattern based around one of my favourite pairs. They worked out quite well, and are soooo comfy, that I fully intend to make a whole lot more! They may look kinda large, but that’s due to the style – a good boy-leg fit, that completely covers your butt. Which means that they don’t ride up, and you don’t get the dreaded VPL either. Yay! They’re a hipster style, so you don’t have to worry about them peeking over the top of your jeans either.

Drafting up a pattern for underwear is pretty simple. Take a pair of your favourite knickers, and copy, as follows:
– Fold them in half down the middle (i.e. the right-hand side should be on top of the left-hand side) so that the back of the undies is on the top
– Lay them on a piece of paper (or fabric) so the middle fold is on the edge of the paper
– Draw around ’em!
– Unfold, and fold ’em the other way, so the front side is on the top
– Once again, line up to the edge of your piece of paper, and draw around them. This bit will be slightly trickier, as you’ll need to move the fabric from the back side of the undies out of the way without disturbing the placement of the top side on the paper. I find it’s easiest to pin around the edges of the undies that you want to trace, and then you can just lift up the rest of the fabric and trace under it
– Now you’ve got your two halves traced, cut them out!
– If you look at your pair of undies, you’ll notice that the seam connecting the front and back halves often isn’t right in the centre. You’re going to need to adjust your pattern to allow for this, so….
– Line up your two halves, so the crotch of the back half lines up with the crotch of the front half, and tape them together
– Measure on your undies how far from the top of the centre back piece the crotch seam is. Now, measure the same distance on your pattern piece, and mark a line.
– Cut along this line, and you now have your pattern pieces! (You’ll probably want to reinforce the sellotape where the original back half joins the original front half.)
– Note that when cutting these out, you’ll need to add on 1cm seam allowance. Because you need to adjust where the crotch seam is, it’s easiest to do this after you’ve finished drafting up your pattern.

Now sew ’em up, add fun bits of lace, stripes of other fabric, some elastic (or more knit fabric) for the waistband, and you’re good to go! 🙂

It was my friend Lisa’s birthday recently, so I made her a couple of pairs of these as a birthday gift. (Note: the pattern for these was drafted in a different way to that listed above, which is why there are seams down the middle of the undies here.) I decided to play around with clashing fabrics, just because I find that kind of fun. I quite like how they turned out, so now I’m considering making myself some in the same fabric combination! 🙂

Comfy undies for Lisa