Body Parts

After having spent weeks thinking as much about nipples as a man (or a lactation consultant) I've  moved on to crotches and butts.I was going to cut out and sew a bunch of t-shirts today.  Then I decided I really needed to address what I'm going to do with the scraps.  Particularly while the machines are threaded with the right color to get the job done.

I thought that a bikini pattern might be a good place to start to make some cotton panties with the bits of fabric.

I had purchased some fold-over elastic and ball point needles for this part of the project a couple weeks ago.

After looking at a few tutorials on line, I jumped in....and the outcome of this pattern was terrible.  The bottoms were so big they wouldn't stay on. Details below.

Plan B was to take some of my favorite underwear and trace a pattern from them.

The top version worked out pretty well (photos below).

The lower one,  Oh My!  I will try re-drafting it with an extra 1" in the crotch and another 1" in the front panel.  I have no idea how that one managed to be so off from the original but it was bad enough for the prototype to land in the trash.

On the other hand, it's worth re-working as the fashion fabric is 4 pieces (center seam) which allows for using smaller scraps.

The result was 2 wearable prototypes. I like the finish of the fold-over elastic attached with a zig-zag. Unfortunately, it seems a little "heavy" for an edge of lightweight fabric.  I faced the entire front section rather than just the crotch of this upper version.

The lower version was the bikini disaster.  I removed about 1" on each side of the side seam.  The bum still has extra fabric.  In retrospect, this pattern was probably designed for a lining which would have sucked up 3/8-5/8 of the outer seam allowance.

This elastic doesn't stretch as much as the store version does, so I'll be adding some length to that connecting bit of elastic for the final versions.  I'm thinking about an extra inch of width on the front panel too.

So I'm back to the drawing board.  And moving on to t-shirt knit cardigans.