Nautical Undies!

Rarely do I find that whatgarments are currently in the high street and what I am feeling inspired to make are the same. However, women's, men's and children's wear are all awash with the nautical trend, and (to quote everyone's favourite multinational corporation): 'I'm Loving It'. I felt my me-made wardrobe could use another set of undies, so using some synthetic navy stretch and the scraps of my stripey T-shirt, I knocked up these:

For the pants, I used the pattern I developed in January, although made it a tiny bit bigger. I found my initial pattern worked really well in super-stretchy fabric with significant lycra content, but when I used the same pattern on not-so-stretchy knit fabric meant for T-shirts with no lycra content, they came out a teensy bit small. In terms of elastic, I used some thin red satiny FOE (fold over elastic) which I previously wrote about using in this post last month. As you may have noticed, I've been pretty into trying to sew with different types of underwear elastic and attempting different methods of application, but I would say FOE is my favourite. It's so easy to use, only requires one step to attach it, AND it creates a really nice clean finish.

The vest was created using the vest pattern I also developed in January, no alterations. You can't really see from this picture too well, but the fabric is a kind of self-stripe, alternately solid and sheer-ish. I wanted to make pants from the same fabric but didn't have enough, but I like how the stripe in this navy fabric echoes and compliments the more obvious stripe of the pants fabric. I used the same FOE as the pants which helped to keep the look uniform.

The ready-gathered anchor trim came from a haberdashers in Southend, Essex, UK (my home town!) when I was back at Christmas assisting my dad on a snowy shopping mission to buy my mum's Christmas present. My dad is really into sailing, so it's nice that he was with me when I bought it. Because the trim has no stretch, I only applied it to the front section of the vest, as I didn't want to restrict my ability to actually get the thing on and off (plus I wanted to keep some back for an as-yet unspecified future project!). So there you have it, the tale of the Nautical Undies.