☆ Bloomers from Otome so Sewing 15, but made from communist-time materials ☆

10/03/24

☆ Intro ☆

Recently I got myself two issues of Otome no Sewing and finally decided to use one of the patterns. I wanted to go for someting easy, so I chose a pair of bloomers.

When it comes to the materials, I remebered about some hand-me-down stuff from my Grandma. Back in the communist times she had to sew or knit clothes for herself and her family. Now she no longer needs to, obviously, so I got showered with some leftovers during last wardrobe cleaning. All that stuff is older than me! I decided to go with white, cotton canvas and knitted lace.

☆ Preparations ☆

Here is the material.

It has some yellowish stains on folds from laying unused for decades, so I washed it with a bit of bleach and dried.

I prepared the pattern while the material was drying. I spread the pattern from the magazine on the table and copied it onto tracing paper, then cut that one out.

I had a lot of different laces. Decided to go for the last one, since it had nice flower pattern and was the longest. I wanted to ensure a fluffly finishing, hehe.

Lastly, I had to trace the pattern on the material, add seam allowance and cut it out. It was only two pieces cut from folded over material, so it was quick. Nevertheless, my back hurt as hell after doing it all since my table is very low, duh.

Freshly cut pieces:

☆ Sewing (finally) ☆

I do not have a serger, so I secured the edges of the material with zigzag stitch.

You are very helpful, thank you.

Next, I put each piece right sides together and pinned alongside the inseam to make sure it won't move during sewing. After sewing each one with a straight stitch, I pressed open the seams.

Afterwards, I measured the leg opening circumference and cut lace accordingly (adding a centimeter of seam allowance on each side). This lace does not have right or wrong side, so I just whacked it in half and sewn together with a straight stitch. This time I did not press the seam allowance to the sides. Instead, I put them tohether and did a zigzag stitch over it.

This is where I messed up. I think I'll probably drop dead if I do not mess up each project at least once. What should be done: put lace around the leg opening right sides together. The part of lace that ought to be visible at the end needs to be facing in the direction of the crotch/waist. Already existing seams on the lace and leg should be aligned.

As you can see on the photo, I put the right side of the lace to the wrong side of the leg and only noticed after finishing one. Thankfully I checked before stitching another one lol.

After finishing both legs, I pulled the lace down to hide the stitches. This is how it looks like before pressing:

And after pressing (much better I'd say):

Now it is time to sew both parts together! Of course they need to be right sides together. At first I was puzzled on how to achieve this, but it's actually pretty easy: you need to have one leg right side out and one leg wrong side out. You put the right side out part into the wrong side out part and that's it! What's left is checking if the leg seams align nicely and pinning everyting together.

Sewn together:

At this point I had big-ass granny pants done lol. Next step was creating tunnels for elastics around the leg openings. To make it easier, I detached accessories container from my sewing machine to use a free arm.

First, I did a straight stitch 1mm above the lace to secure it more tightly and mark one side of the tunnel. My elastic rubber had 5,3mm width and my seam allowance was around 9mm at that point, so I had 3mm margin for the position of my second stitch. It turned out that aligning the first stitch with the edge of my machine's foot created just enough of a distance for the second stitch. I left a bit of an opening from the inseam's side to be able to insert elastic there.

Next step was folding over the top edge of the bloomers and creating a tunnel there. The process was very similair, and here is the effect so far:

To insert the elastic into the tunnel you need a safety pin that is slightly smaller than the tunnel. You pin it to one side of the rubber, insert it into the opening you have left and start moving it inside milimeter by milimeter.

I hate this part with all my might. Especially when the safetly pin opens inside and injures me, so then I have to somehow close it while also trying not to stain everything with blood, great fun. My fingertips also get irritated quickly when I try to move the material along the elastic, so I am pretty furious by the time I'm finished. And it's not even the end of the nightmare! After the rubber is out on the other side, you have to put one over another and stitch them flat, so that everything can be fed back into the tunnel. The thing is, 50% of time I realize that one of the ends was misaligned only AFTER they are stitched, so I have to rip them apart and sew again, duh. The last part is closing the openings of the tunnels.

But all that pain was kinda worth it:

The only thing left was adding ribbon bows. I tried to make them more or less of the same size and attached them by hand.

Top ribbon:

Leg ribbons:

☆ Finished bloomers ☆

They are under the cat I promise.