Can't Touch This

Lets Talk Panties

When you start making historical costumes, sort of the first thing you wind up doing is having to learn about historical underpants.

in a nutshell

The important thing about underthings is that if you aren't wearing the proper ones, nothing lies properly on top. Just like how sometimes a gal's chest just looks different when she's not wearing a bra under her shirt, she's gonna look weird wearing a bodice without a corset underneath.

I'm looking at you Sarah Jessica Parker. HOW DID YOU GET AWAY WITH IT, DAMNIT?!

This is my subtle plug to DO YOUR RESEARCH. (My peers at school understand how I feel about this) but also, MAKE YOUR UNDERPANTS.

Because we all need to have them under our dresses, every re-enactor costumer and their mother has their way of making bloomers... and usually they're all the same. Look there are only so many ways to make a pair of pajama bottoms. That said, I recently needed to make my own version of... harem pants? something like them genie pants... politically-incorrectly-named-arabian-nights-pants and this seemed like the best way to go.

How to make bloomers/pajama pants/haremish pants/what have you, they're really fucking comfortable

First, you will need:

• Fabric, I'm about 40 inches from my waist to the floor and I knew I wanted these roomy so I went with about 2 yards of fabric at something like 72" wide. These were for an upcoming costume and possibly clowning or something later so I made mine out of copper striped silk taffeta. I don't recommend silk taffeta for this project.
• Your sewing machine
• the appropriate threads
• Elastic. (mine is 3/4" knit non-roll) I generally prefer non-roll because why not?

1. Get ready for your endeavor by putting on your favorite comfy pair of pants, you'll be bending around and stuff so you gotta get comfy. Doughnut pattern optional. You can make yourself a drink now if you'd like.

   

   As usual, take a drink and ignore the mess.

2. Lay out your fabric (I forgot to take a picture of this)
3. Realize you don't have a pattern. That's fine, you have your pattern very close to you...
4. Take off your pants and fold them in half, these are going to be your pattern. What you really need is the curve in the crotch. The curved edge should be pointed out and the straight end will be on the fold.
   
5. Mark the curve of the crotch area with a pencil. Mark everything else. The length can be anywhere from your knee to your ankle depending on what you're actually doing. Since these were going to be "harem pants" I ended them at the ankle.
6. Cut out your pattern twice. You'll wind up with two of this shape:

   

   Stolen from another DIY for this. You should basically have this shape.

7. Fire-up your sewing machine and realize you don't have the right thread for this project. Pick out the closest approximation you can.

   

   Close enough.

8. Start by hemming the bottom of your pants pieces. You should be making a channel for your elastic band to go around to close the ankle. If you're making pajama bottoms and don't want them closed down there, skip the wide channel and just do a regular rolled hem. Or get yourself a surger. Those things are fucking awesome.
   
9. Realize you can't find your fucking snips even though you were using them like, 20 god-damn minutes earlier and you expressly told yourself not to misplace them because you knew you were going to fucking need them in a few minutes. Resort to using your teeth. Then move on to whatever other cutting implement you can find. I suggest nail clippers. Take a drink you Macguyver, you.

   

   I used sewing shears before resorting to an exact-o knife.

10. cut your first piece of elastic to the length of your lower calf, or knee or ankle, where you want the end of your pants to rest.
11. Locate the one safety pin you know you own because you used it to close your cardigan yesterday. Once it's found, resolve to go out and buy more. You'll forget this resolution the next time you get to the fabric store.
12. attaching the safety pin to one end of the elastic, thread the elastic through your channel making sure not to lose the other end in the channel. If you do, you'll have to pull the elastic out and start over again. Cussing will be involved. Take another drink. As you thread, the fabric should be gathering around the middle of the length of elastic.
13. Sew the ends of the elastic down at each end of the channel and just save yourself the trouble of trying to do this when you get to sewing the leg together or else you'll repeat step 12 more than you need to. Trust me on this one. I know. This is why there aren't pictures of this step.
14. Sew the inseam of your pant leg (yes that's what you were working on) up to the curved bit. DO NOT SEW THE CURVED BIT TOGETHER. I used to do this every time I made a pair of bloomers. I still do.
15. Marvel at the fact that you just made a pant leg and hey it looks like pants! Take pictures of yourself with one pant leg on and realize you can't use them in your blog because you're still technically pantsless and you're not supposed to show up pantsless on the internet. (Unless you choose to in which, more power to ya.)
16. Repeat steps 8-16 again. Drink twice.

    

    I stupidly forgot to get pictures of most of these steps so here's something
    I drew earlier...

17. Dance break. Congratulate yourself on how good of a seamstress you are. Cuss a few times when your bobbin fucks itself over again and threaten to pawn your sewing machine. Take it back when you re-thread it twice and it starts working again.
18. Flip each leg so that their right side is facing out. This is important because we're gonna sew the crotch.
19. Sew the curved bits so that they make one BIG smiley face perpendicular to your inseam. The reason you flipped these right-sides out is that for me, anyway, you're sort of coming at it from the waist hole.
20. Speaking of waist holes, make another channel for the elastic at the waist, leave a little hole for the insertion of elastic.
21. Cut and thread your elastic again. Have a mild panic attack when you can't find the safety pin. Everything is fine, it's under your sewing machine.
22. sew down the elastic and close the channel. Give everything a tug and you're finished!
23. Put them on and see if it all fits. Take a bunch of pictures of yourself:

Discarded doughnut pants...

                                         

And there you go, something like harem pants. these are a little poofy and I might not have used silk taffeta for them if iI could think of a better fabric. I might like.. put marbles in them or something to weigh them down but we'll see when they're added onto everything else. I'll post about that later.

Now you know how to make sexy bloomers (if you're into that) or you can wow your friends with homemade pj bottoms for the next gift giving holiday! Due to the nature of faire, I tend to go through two pairs of bloomers a year. (One pair will give out during northern and I'll replace it and the other pair will give out after southern. At least they're staggered.)

I hope this made sense, have fun with that, bitches.