I see London.  I see France.  I can see Russia from my house.  I’m sorry.  I couldn’t resist the cliché with the political twist….

While Lisa was here on a working vacation in July she, with the help of the book “Lingerie Secrets: Sew a Perfect Fit for Every Body”, helped me draft a pattern that would–once lowered and louvered; nipped and tucked; clipped and snipped–enable me to make my own, customized panties.

I have what I call an athletic build: short and lean but built like a Hobbit with an appetite to match.  Manufactured clothing never quite seems to fit.  In the case of panties, they always seem too long in the rise without enough coverage in a very crucial portion of my anatomy.  It seems like all underwear are  “creepers” or “peepers”:  Some sneak into places they don’t belong and others show themselves where they shouldn’t.  I don’t want to go around tugging at my keister or showing my underwear to the public.  Oh…heh, er…I just did (giggle).

In recent times, it’s also become increasingly difficult to find the right cut combined with lace elastic (to hide panty lines) combined with 100% cotton.  We all know that it’s not healthy to wear synthetics on “that” portion of our anatomy so why are all the underwear either synthetic or combined with a synthetic?   The only 100% cotton underwear I’m able to locate these days are built like men’s underwear minus the fly and who wants that?   Then there’s the issue of finding 100% cotton, low-rise hipster panties with lace elastic MADE IN THE USA.  Do these even exist?  So many reasons to make my own.

The origin for all things panty-like is based on the granny panty.  Below is Lisa’s original drawing based on my measurements with my prototype panty pattern and “final” paper pattern on top.  Her original paper pattern had an untimely death with a pair of scissors as I learned to draft patterns.   The prototype is made from an old shirt I pulled out of the rag box.  They’ve had the seam ripper taken to them many times.

Below is the beginnings of fitting.  During the frustrations of fitting, I did indeed try to disassemble a pair of my favorite underwear to make a pattern, but, once disassembled and compared to my pattern-in-the-works, I realized the store-bought panties really didn’t fit that well:

Below is the assembled panty.  Fitting nearly perfect but still a ways to go.  Notice that there is a seam up the center and a tuck or two in the seat.  I didn’t tuck in both sides as I only need one perfect cheek-fitting for the pattern:

Two days of fitting and a day or two of assembling and tweaking later, here are my finished, customized, well-fitting, 100% cotton panties made in the USA of recycled and imported materials (Sigh, I’m not sure where the elastic lace is made.).  They don’t look absolutely perfect, but wear like clouds.  Besides who’s going to see my underwear?