Quick Make – Bulk Undies!

By December 18, 2018Quick Make Monday

Does anyone else’s laundry pile up around the holidays? Cause I feel like I do a load and suddenly there are three more loads that need to be done! I swear my kids are putting clean laundry back into the dirty laundry hampers just so they don’t have to put their clothes away…

Today after the third or fourth load, I realized I hadn’t done any of my own laundry… and now I’m nearly out of my good underwear. Sure, I have some old “emergency” pairs – admit it, you do too – but I don’t actually want to wear them. So tonight’s quick make project is assembly line production of underwear using my serger and cover stitch machines. I’ve posted about making your own underwear using only a sewing machine, but using my serger and cover stitch machines make the assembly process much faster, so here’s how I do it:

Step one: Layer your fabrics with folded sides lined up so that you can cut multiple pieces at the same time. CUT out the pieces. My pattern is just three pieces: front, back and crotch lining.

  

Step two: CUT foldover elastic pieces for each pair: One piece for the top, one piece for each leg.

Step three: Serge the crotch lining onto the back piece along the leg openings. Serge the leg openings on the front pieces too. Serging these openings before putting on the foldover elastic gives the openings a little more strength and less opportunity to stretch out in a bad way later.

  

Step four: Serge the front and back pieces together at the crotch.

Step five: Using the cover stitch machine, attach the foldover elastic to the leg openings. Literally just fold the elastic over the edge of the opening 🙂 It really is that simple. Keeping everything lined up, is a bit tricky, so it does take some practice. Apparently there is an attachment I could get that would feed the foldover elastic neatly around the edge of the fabric, but I have not yet acquired this seemingly amazing attachment yet. (For any family members reading this and still in need of Christmas gift ideas, the attachment would need to work with my machine – a Janome Cover Pro 2000 CPX 😉 )

  

Step six: Serge one side seam together. Press seam to back.

Step seven: Using the cover stitch machine, attach the foldover elastic to the waist.

Step eight: Serge the second (and last) side seam together.

OPTIONAL Step nine: Fold the elastic to the inside of the underwear and stitch again with the cover stitch machine. I did this to some of the underwear that I decided I didn’t like how the foldover elastic looked. I’m a perfectionist sometimes (most of the time) and I like my stitching to look neat and tidy. I’m still learning all the tricks to using my cover stitch machine, so I am far from perfect on it. I didn’t like how some of the elastic attached, so I just folded it under and stitched again. This doesn’t change the fit of the underwear too much and I like the look much better on some of my pairs. Here are the two ways I finished all the underwear tonight:

 

Finally, tie off all the exposed serger threads and press the final side seam toward the back.

Voila! New underwear for the week that is fun, comfy and NOT my emergency pairs! Bonus: sewing these was more fun than doing more laundry tonight 🙂

Happy Monday friends!