This past summer when my little guy turned 2 1/2, it was time to start toilet training. (I wanted to go on our upcoming vacation sans cloth diapers and I needed to have him trained by the time he started his new school in September.) When my daughter ditched the diaper, I made up a pattern for girl's underwear using upcycled t-shirts and FOE (fold-over elastic), but I wasn't very sure of how to shape boy's underwear. I found this wonderful downloadable PDF pattern on Etsy for boy's underwear and was immediately intrigued by the fact that it doesn't have elastic that can dig into a child's belly, but uses cotton fabric with a slight stretch for waist and leg bands.
The pattern pieces for size 2 were small enough that I could cut them out from scraps of XL men's t shirts left over from other projects.
Here you can see how nicely the four crotch pieces for each pair could be cut out in one go from a single t shirt sleeve (with room to spare!).
The trick to getting these undies to stay up is to use jersey with 3-5% spandex or elastane for the waist and leg bands. I found a pretty good assortment of used t-shirts at my local outdoor market for 50 cents each that were just right.
As my little guy is a little beanpole (very skinny), this pattern was slightly wide on him. But one of the joys of making your own clothes is that you can make them fit perfectly. So I fiddled with the pattern, taking it in at the sides and making the bands a little shorter, and they were absolutely perfect. So I went on to make a load of them. Here are just some. (The pair on the bottom right was an attempt to use some printed t-shirt fabric as a decoration. Fail. I also realized too late that I didn't have enough of any one stretchy shirt for all three bands. Double fail. That particular pair is now our emergency pair, when all the others are dirty!)
I just love this pattern. I love the softness of the waistband. I will probably never buy my little boy underwear again. Now I need to draft my own pattern for girl's underwear using this soft waistband technique for big sister! More photos and details on my blog, Cucicucicoo.
7 comments:
What a clever idea. I love how you can use up small pieces of fabric :)
Debbie
EOD
These are wonderful and very inspirational. Thanks for sharing. Zoe x
Thank you ladies! I still need to make some of my own with your pattern, Zoe! Except now I want to make them with this sort of waistband, which is so comfy! :) Lisa
Whoa! Underwear! That's awesome! Thumbs up!
I need to do this in a boxer brief for my son. They are so cute and I live the waist band.
Craftymomma
I have been saying I'm going to start making out own underwear for months, and still haven't taken the plunge! Thanks for an extra push in that direction :)
Thank you all! I'm so glad that this project may be helping to push some of you to make t-shirt undies! :)
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