Fun fact about me: panties is a word I loathe and avoid saying in the normal course of events. But it’s appropriate in this case.
I sewed some underwear!
Now that my sewing machines are accessible, I’ve been casting about for what to make first. I cycled through a lot of fun things (dress! pants! top!) before coming to the conclusion that what I really needed was new underwear. And while I know that bras are not something I want to integrate into my sewing wheelhouse, knickers seemed to be in my skillset.
I took a class from Sincere Studio, a new-to-me sewing studio. The class was great, walking us through what kind of elastic to purchase, what kind of material works the best, and then taking us step by step through the sewing process. I’d not worked with fold over elastic before, so that part was very helpful.
The instructor let us know that the first pair of underwear we make will probably not be quite right. But by the third pair, we will have locked in the skills and will love our underwear.
When cutting out the pattern, I went for a higher waist because my current underwear slides down in the front. I almost went for the highest waist, but the instructor said the high waist was really high, so I knocked it back to a medium-high waist.
The pattern (Iris Knickers, by Tilly and the Buttons) was easy to follow and had a little trick for joining everything up that was helpful. When finished sewing them, I tried them on and found that, my goodness, that underwear was high waisted! The legs are the slightest bit tight, but not terribly so.
I’ve been wearing my very large pair of underwear with dresses and such, and one thing I do like about them is that they don’t crawl up. I put them on, and they stay in place for the day.
So I do have some iterating to do, and I wish I hadn’t bought quite so much of bright white organic cotton, but I’m looking forward to my homemade underwear future.
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