More Boxers, With a Little Tutorial

Two more pair for DS. The paisley is fairly sedate, especially when compared to the floral. But DS has a wild streak and he won't mind wearing purple/fucshia floral boxers. In fact, he'll probably make sure they stick out of his pants a little. ;-)

Taly asked to see the pattern piece so here that is. You can see the add-on I made to the fly area so that I could construct like the RTW pair. The extension is 2 inches wide.



As I mentioned last post, my construction differs from the pattern instructions. On the L pattern piece only (the one where the fly overlap will end up on top), cut off 1" of that extra 2" that was added to the fly opening. Turn it under 1" and press a crease. I use a pressing cloth so I don't melt the fabric!

On the R piece, fold the extension under 1" and press, and then fold it under again another inch and press. (Only fold the R piece twice.)

Once both sides were pressed, I used a glue stick to hold the folds in place since the fabric is slippery.



On the R piece only, stitch the extension in place 1" from the edge, catching the fold. You can do this from the back side.



Here's the back side of the R piece after the stitching.



Next, press up your leg hems. It will be helpful to have this crease already in place later. Then unfold the hem and sew/serge the inseam edges together, separately for each piece of course, so that you end up with two "tubes."



Turn one "tube" right side out and the other wrong side out. Slip the right-side-out piece inside the other so that right sides are touching. Align the crotch curve edges and the outside edges of the pressed-under fly extensions. Starting at the bottom of the fly extensions, sew/serge in one motion all the way up to the waist edge, as shown below. (Keep in mind this photo shows the boxers flat. You will only be sewing/serging along the edge.)



Next, separate the fly opening and fold over the top extension (L piece) once so that the fly opening lays flat at the bottom. (The extension will pretty much want to do this fold itself.) Stitch the L piece extension, ending approximately 2" above the fly extension bottom edge (which is underneath).



Close the fly so the L side is over the R and pin in place, or you can use my hi-tech method of taping in place. (I like the tape better because some knits will run/ladder if you pierce them in the wrong place with a pin.)

Now finish stitching the L fly extension, starting where you left off and curving into the Center Front seam. Continue up along the CF and then cross over back to where you started. This will anchor the bottom edges of the fly extensions in place.



While the CF is still taped, I sew the button in place, stitching through both layers of the fly. DS doesn't actually use the fly opening so he's OK with a buttonhole-less button.



Hem the leg. Since the crease has already been set, all I have to do is move to my CS machine and stitch.



I didn't take photos of the elastic application (sorry!), but I changed that up too. The Simplicity instructions have you fold down a casing and thread the elastic through. I don't like that method because the elastic always twists later on. (The RTW boxers were not done that way either.) Instead, I sewed the elastic into a circle and then quarter-marked the elastic and the waist. Then I put the elastic next to the wrong side of the waist and serged the raw edge of the waist and the elastic together, stretching the elastic to fit the waist between my quarter marks. (This is a stop-and-go process as you stretch, serge, readjust, stretch, serge, readjust, etc.)

After the elastic was attached, I folded down the waist/elastic once, toward the inside, and coverstitched it into place while stretching the fabric/elastic flat. The last step is to stitch along the top edge of the waist, about 1/4" from the edge. I did that on my sewing machine. The RTW has a chainstitch there, but I didn't feel like unthreading/un-needling and then rethreading/re-needling my CS machine.



These boxers with the one pattern piece are extremely fast to cut and sew. But … I'm going to have to make a copy of this pattern adding a sideseam because I have big "scraps" of the fabrics left over which are enough to make more boxers from, but only if I have separate pattern pieces for each body quadrant. If I had bought the fabric specifically to make these boxers, I would've bought less and wouldn't have big leftover pieces to use. But since I didn't, there's too much for just one pair of boxers and too little for anything else unless I make sideseams in the pattern.

02/28/08: Edited just to see if Bloglines now picks up both feeds for this post.