Drafting a Pattern : Underwear - 22 February 2025

flowertron (73)in #sewing • 4 days ago (edited)

This turned out to be a bigger challenge than expected; I tried drafting a sewing pattern shared by @beautiful12 as part of the textile club. You can find her post here:

https://steemit.com/slctextileclub-s23w1/@beautiful12/slctextileclub-s23w1-or-patron-basico-de-blumer-para-dama :

I don’t fulfill all the requirements in terms of photos, selfies or videos, so there's no need to 'mark' my work. In fact I’m participating to support the textile club and to hopefully improve my sewing skills.

Below you can see a photo of what I initially thought was the finished task. I drafted a front, back and the middle section ( a gusset) of an item of underwear, ie a pair of knickers, or pants, and the task calls them ‘bloomer’.

I will not tell you specifically how I made the draft but I encourage you to read the instructions. Below are my current measurements as required to fulfill the task and the calculations :

Waist circumference = 91cm / 4 = 22.75 rounded up to 23 cm - 1cm = 22 cm.
Hip circumference = 101cm - 20% of 101 = (20.2) rounded up to 81cm / 4 = 20.25 cm rounded up to 20.50 cm.
Waist to Hip = 16 cm.
Front Rise = 24 cm.
Back Rise = 29 cm.
Crotch length = 61 cm.
Gusset = 61 cm - ( 24 cm + 29 cm) = 8 cm.

Those are the calculations after I did them again though. The calculations that led to the draft below turned out to be wrong.

_{Front 1}

I found it a bit hard to draft a soft curve from E to F, so my first attempt was too angular and straight. I managed to rub that thick line and re made the curve a bit better :

_{Front 2}

I was much happier with the result above. I then started drafting the back; I followed all the instructions and you can see the finished back piece below :

The piece for the in-between-the-legs or gusset clearly indicates to me that somewhere my drafting has gone a bit wrong. The gusset below looks nothing like the gusset in my current pants : it’s too short at only 8cm.

I reckoned that the only way to find out was by just going ahead and testing it with a proper piece of jersey fabric. I used an old t-shirt as a toile or sketch to see what it looked like. Before I did that I decided to trace the draft using greaseproof paper :

I started by looking at the gusset again :

The photo above shows you the original gusset. As @ beautiful12’s was 12cm and mine was only 8cm I decided to trace 4cm from the front piece making up the 4cm. The result is much more convincing now :

Above you can see the original vs the redrafted piece which is lying on top of the original front piece. You can see how much I needed to take out of the pattern because of my wrong calculation. When I finished my original draft I thought it looked a bit too big for me but then when I rechecked the (translation of the) instructions I noticed one calculation was wrong. I’d forgotten to take out the 20% off the hip measurement. So I corrected the draft when I traced over it :

_{I must try to make proper pattern weights instead of using cartons of juice.}

I traced and cut the three pattern pieces :

_{Although probably wrong I'm proud of this achievement.}

I think I should have ironed the pattern pieces to make them lie flat.

I then got an old t-shirt to use the fabric for the first toile :

That’s the front on the fold. I added 0.6cm seam allowance to the crotch when it joins to the gusset piece.

Above you can see that I also added a seam allowance to the back crotch-gusset seam. I didn’t add any seam allowance to the sides or top because I have a feeling that it won’t be necessary. The fabric is cotton jersey; it’s not like my Sloggy pants so I reckon I will need more negative ease.

I also added 0.6cm seam allowance to the gusset piece.