Learn to sew your own lingerie - Making knickers (Class 2 of 4)

1. Intro Video Class 2 of 4 Lingerie making series: So welcome back. This is class two of four. In the last class, we looked at the materials needed for lingerie. We looked at the stretch percentages and we looked at all the tools and equipment you'll need. Along with Han of practice with machine stitches, so you can get used to the different types of stitches that we use in laundry. Now, if you've already done the class or you are not a complete beginner, then this is where we are. Moving on to actually making knickers. So we will be making the honey knickers. The honey kickers are really comfortable, lovely pair of knickers. So in this class, I'll be showing you everything from the fabrics that we're going to be using for the knickers, how to read the pattern and put the pattern together, and how to choose your size. And then, of course, I'll be going through how to sew the actual n together. So it's a really nice class this. At the end of it, you will have a pair of knickers that you've made that will hopefully be the start to your me made lingerie collection. So if you haven't checked out class one, then definitely could check out class one first. It's really good to kind of get the foundations in for lingerie sewing specifically. If you do have some experience with sewing, then you can maybe just go over class one quite quickly and then come back here and we can get one of the *******. Some of the techniques that we'll be diving into a bit more thoroughly is how to actually cut out your pattern pieces. I actually show you different ways to cut out your fabric. So you've got some options there and to see what's easiest for you as well because there's different ways of doing things. You'll also start learning about my elastic tension technique. So when you sew ingre, you will have to sew elastics and a lot of people struggle with that side of things. So I have created the elastic tension technique, which goes from a beginner to advance. So in the knickers, we do the beginner method. If you want to see how that progresses, then hop onto the next class in where we'll be making a brat, and we'll be getting onto the more intermediate advanced stages how to apply the elastics. It gives a really professional finish. So don't have any wavy seams or you don't have too much gathering. It gives you a really professional finish. By the end of the course, you would have been able to sew your own knickers, and they will look professional as well with the Elastic tension technique that I include in the class. I'm super excited to see how you get on. Make sure to post your photos and leave your reviews. I'd love to hit what you think. Then also, when you've made your knickers, you can move on to class three or four where we make the brolet. 2. Fabrics for Knickers Skill share: So here we have all the fabrics that you could possibly use for kicker sewing. I've divided these up. This slide, we have stretch fabrics and this slide we have rigid and woven fabrics. With the two different types of fabrics, stretch means that you can't stretch the fabric out. It's going to contour to the body, and then rigid means you can't stretch out. It stays as it is. It's completely flat. It won't stretch out to the contours of the body. Within undr sewing and kicker sewing, you'll probably use more often stretch fabrics, although you can use rigid or woven fabrics as well. We tend to use more stretched fabrics these days because it's a lot more cofier we find to use and the fit is actually more flexible as well, so it's easier to get the fit right. In the stretch area of the table, we have jerseys here, we've actually got a woven that has stretch in it and I'll talk about that. We've got a stretch lace and we've got a power mesh or power net. So firstly, let's look at this fabric here. This is a cotton. The fiber that it is made up is a cotton, but it also has a little bit of elastin in as well. Because it is a knit fabric, it would stretch out, the structure of the knit creates a looseness to where you can where the fabric then stretches out. However, because this has got elastin in, it stretches out, but it also rebounds quite well. What that means is when you stretch a fabric out, it comes in. Some fabrics, you stretch out and they don't really have much of a pull to come back in. It also means that there is stretch along this way as well. This would be the main stretch because it's stretchier. But there is also stretch along the length of the fabric as well. That makes it a really good fabric to use for comfy undies because it stretches in all directions. It's cotton, which is really breathable and natural. Then with that added elastine, it fits on the contours of the body really well. So next we have this is actually a bamboo jersey. Again, it's a knitted fabric, but the difference is it's made up of bamboo fibers instead of cotton fibers, and it also does have a lastin in as well. As you can see, that one really does rebound quite well. However, because of the different fiber, it has different qualities, so this is a bit thinner. It's a bit more lightweight. It's a bit more drapy. Bamboo fabric is a bit more drapy whereas with the cotton, it's a bit more thicker. It has a bit more structure to it. But not only has it got that different drape and that different feel, it is really soft. I think bamboo jersey is probably one of the softest fabrics that I have come across. If you want to have really comfy is, then bamboo is definitely the way to go. However, I do find that bamboo isn't quite as durable as cotton. You might find that after a year or a few years of wearing it, the fabric might have worn through a bit. Whereas with the cotton, it's a lot more durable and it would take a lot longer for that to happen. But this is a really lovely fabric. If you do want, like I said, really comfy is, then definitely go for a bamboo jersey. Really soft as well. It's so lovely to wear. I just works so well for underwear. That's that. Then we have up here, going to go up here. This again, this is a cotton jersey. It's actually one where there's two pieces that have been stuck together, sewn together. It's quite a unique fabric. However, I stretch it out. You can see it does come back, but not quite as well as this one. Then I stretch it this way. It doesn't stretch at all. This is a cotton jersey with no elastine in it. You can still make knickers out of these and I still have. This is a really lovely comfy fabric as well. But you'll have to bear in mind that it's not going to stretch along the length of the fabric, so you might have to add more height, but it's still completely suitable for underwear. You can see as I've stretched it out, it hasn't rebounded back because we've now got it just looks like it's been a little bit stretched out because it's not come back together and that's because it doesn't have the elastine in it. The elastin really does help with the rebound of the knitted fabric. So the other stretch fabric we have is the power mesh. Power mesh is really common fabric to use in all lingerie garments, to be honest, because it works so well, it stretches in both directions, has quite a nice stretch. Usually more stretch in one way than the other, but even still, it's still quite a very good stretch. As you can see, it's quite transparent, that gives a nice look to underwear and it's also quite breathable. This is actually a Nylon power mesh. It's not natural, but it still is quite a breathable fabric because it has these holes in it. This is actually called a brick wool structure fabric. If I hold this up, I don't know if you'll be able to see this, pull this apart. You can see the little holes. And they're basically little rectangles. The length of the rectangle is going this way and that's the most stretch that way. Then if you pulled this side out, that would be the shorter side. The power mesh is a fabric that has its own qualities. This is suitable to use in knickers as well. Bear in mind is quite transparent, so maybe you don't want that on the front of your knickers, but it's up to you, maybe you do. So the other stretch fabric that we're going to look at. This is actually a woven fabric, but it has elastin in again. The great thing about elastin is you can put it in any type of fabric and then it will stretch. So this here is a satin fabric. The satin is the weave of the fabric. It's how you get the really shiny side, and then there's usually a mat side underneath. That is called a satin weave. It's actually a woven fabric, because this fabric has elastin woven into it as well as the main fiber, which will be polyester in this case, it then stretches. So it stretches really nicely, of course that way, but it doesn't stretch that way. You can still use it as a stretch fabric. But again, you need to bear in mind that it only stretches one way. It does have a bias stretch as well, so there's only one direction it doesn't stretch. But yeah, really luxury, lovely fabric to use. Then because I've spoken about that, I'm going to speak about the silk one as well. As you can see, it's a similar Look, it has the shiny on one side and it has the match on the other. This again is a satin weave. But the difference is, it's not stretchy and it's made out of a natural fiber. This is actually a silk satin. Be it doesn't have the elastine in it, it doesn't stretch. This is a woven fabric that doesn't have any stretch. But again, it's really luxurious and has a lovely drape and it's super soft. The other stretch fabric I want to talk about before we get onto the rest of the side is, of course, the stretch lace. This is a stretch galoon lace. This is actually a very white trim, either side here is what we call the scallop edge. So because this one stretches, this one stretches very nicely that way, it doesn't have much of it doesn't have any stretch that way. It just has what we call a give. Some fabrics, because of the way they've been made, just have a little bit of a give but it's not stretch. Aces have their own lace machines. Basically, the fibers are twisted together in a certain way, which then creates this pattern. And the same with the other fabrics, you can have a lastin in it or you can have it without, which will then create a rigid lace, which I will show you in a minute because I've got one to show you. So yeah, when you use lace, you need to bear in mind that generally if you're using a stretch lace, you need to bear in mind that it only stretches really in one way. But of course, a very pretty and common fabric used for lingerie because it's usually really soft, especially when it's been made for lingerie, really pretty. And with that extra stretch, it really is quite versatile. So as I've been talking about that, I will go on to the other lace I have here. This is a lovely eyelash lace. Look how beautiful that is. This is a really lovely lace, but it does not have any stretch. But as you can see, it has a little bit of a give, especially in the middle bit here that has quite a bit of give there. That's because of the structure of the actual lace. How the fibers have been twisted together. Here is a lot more structure, so it's not going to have that much give, whereas in the middle. It doesn't have as much structure, so it's going to have a lot more give, but it is still a rigid fabric. The only difference is that this doesn't have a lastinan whereas this one does and obviously is slightly different design and a slightly different lace. Yeah, a very luxurious fabric that will make any lingerie garment look really lovely and pretty. So as I've spoken about the galoon edges, I'm going to speak about this one. Now, a lot of people get this confused. This isn't a lace. I'll tell you why? Because it has not been made with a lace machine that twists the fabric in a certain way to make the patterns. What we have here is an underneath fabric, mesh tu fabric we've got underneath, and then what has happened is the design on top has been stitched on top with an embroidery machine. And then it's the same at the edge as well. Basically, you have a base layer, a base fabric, and you can do this on any fabric, but on lingerie, it's usually on a tool fabric, and then you simply embroider the design on top. It's like a two step process, whereas this is all done on the machine all at once. So this was actually called an embroidery, not a lace. Because this is a rigid one, so there's no stretch in the only place there would be a stretch is the fabric underneath. There was a little bit of give on that way, actually, but there's nothing on that way. This needs to be used for a rigid or woven pattern piece. It can't be used for a stretch one. Next, we have. This is a tool fabric. A tol has this honeycomb weave to it. It's a little bit like the power mesh, but the whole structure is a little bit different. Instead of the brick layer effect with the length of the hole going one way, it's actually more of a honeycomb hole. If we hold that up, you might be able to see that. This one is a rigid fabric, but it does have a little bit of give and that's just because of the structure of the holes. It doesn't have much give that way. This is a rigid fabric with outstretch. If you added elastine in this, it would stretch. You would have something more like the power mesh. But again, a lovely transparent fabric that can be used for knickers. So this is a lace fabric as well. This has a very repeatable small pattern. As you can see, it's what we would call a geometric pattern. Whereas unlike this lace, the pattern is a lot wider and it's not a geometric, it's a floral pattern. Yeah, this doesn't have any stretch in it like this lace does. It does have a little tiny bit of mechanical give what we'd call that. It's a rigid fabric and it needs to be used on a rigid pattern piece because without the elastine, it just doesn't have that stretch. Yeah, lovely. This is actually a really soft fabric as well, and this is Nylon as well. Nylon is used quite a lot in lingre fabrics like this. This fabric here can actually be easily dyed as well. You can dye Nylon. It's a really lovely fabric to use in knickers or any lingerie garments. Then onto the woven fabrics. So here we have a woven cotton fabric. Woven simply means that the yarns have been weaved along the length of the fabric and then down on the other way of the fabric. You have a very simple way of constructing fabric here. This is a very lightweight, it's more like a cotton lawn fabric. So a lawns thinner than your usual woven cotton fabrics. It's got a breathable aspect. It's really good for lightweight, like summer wear. But you can use this in knickers as well for pattern pieces that require a rigid or waven. Fabric. The other one that I have is very similar. Again, this is a cotton. The only difference really is the density. This one is a slightly thicker, slightly more crisper fabric. Whereas this one's a bit more lightweight, has a bit more drape to it. It's a bit softer because it's a bit more crispier because of that extra density of the fabric. But, they're both cottons and they're both breavable and they can both be used in kickers that require rigid or woven pan pieces. 3. Elastics for Knickers skills share: So for kicker making, you'll be using elastics with kicker making because when you use stretch fabrics, you need to prevent the outer edges, so the waist and the legs from stretching out. You then also need to keep the edge close to the body. For example, if you didn't have the elastics, then the fabric is going to gape away from the body and the edge of the fabric is also going to stretch out. So the elastic is very, very important for all lingerie sewing. The only times where you don't need it would be when you're using woven or rigid fabrics and you're hemming it. Instead, they might be more of a short style or a French kicker style, something like that. But it's not often that you don't need elastics. The type of elastics that you'll need for kicker sewing specifically. So you want something that is between six mill and ten mil wide. When I talk about the width of the elastic, I mean the so part of the elastic. Here is the decorative edge. So that doesn't get sewn. It's the inner part here, which is the width that I'm talking about. 6-10 mill wide is perfect for sewing knickers. Here, this is a six millwide. I wouldn't go any smaller than that because it can get really tricky to sew. You don't need it smaller than that on your leg holes or your waist. If you're looking at a kicker elastic, often, what you find is when they stretch out, you can see through the holes of the so part of the elastic not sure how well this is going to show on the video, but you can see these little holes. Now, that means it's been knitted elastic, which is perfect for knickers because it doesn't need to be really dense, it doesn't need to be really thick for knickers because you're not using, for instance, bra straps, they need to hold the weight up or the band elastic needs to be able to hold down. Whereas with kioelastics, there's not really much pressure on the elastics. Like I said, we're just using it so that the fabric doesn't stretch out and then it's held nicely to the body. So also when you stretch out your elastic, you want to make sure that it has a good stretch retention. Stretch retention means that it bounces back. How it bounces back? It wants to go back in. Soon as you pull it out, it wants to go back in. Elastics and I have come across them, you pull it out and it basically stays out. That's not what you do not want those elastics. They do not work for lingr sewing, often when you have got elastics like that, it's usually because the elastin has actually got too old and it's losing its retention. You want nice elastic that comes back from where you've stretched out like that. You want the kicaelastic to be 80-120% stretch. If I test this one, this is my zero. I'm not using my measurements at the bottom because you won't be able to see on the camera. But trust me, this is a zero here, and then this is 10 centimeters here, stretch it out and this one is about 85. That's perfect for KicElastic. So this is a lovely elastic, actually. I really do love this one and it's got a lovely decorative edge and having that decorative edge can sometimes just really make your knickers look really lovely. I would advise to have a nice decorative edge if you want that. Then here we have a plain one. This is a very soft elastic and it is plush on both sides, which just means that the fibers have just been brushed, so it's really soft on the body. Again, this would be perfect. This one here, stretch that out. That's about 85 as well. Again, that's perfect and that's a plain edge. If you don't want a decorative edge, you could use something like this. The thing with Nica elastic is that it's going to be around your leg holes. That might be quite sensitive area, you want to make sure that's really soft and it doesn't dig in. It's not annoying, it's not scratchy because that can be the most uncomfortable thing. Do go for a really nice soft one and not too thick as well. These are the type of elastics that you generally use for kicker sewing. You've got the decorative edges here and this is basically the same. You've just got different color, different decorative edge. Then the other one that you can use for kicker sewing is fold over elastic. We'll be talking more about fold over elastic in Module four. Fold over elastic is really good for kickers in particular because it is really soft. I can grit a really comfortable kicker. So with the fold over elastic, I would advise it to be at least 12 mill wide, the whole width and with the fold over elastic, you simply fold it over the edge of the fabric. Because you have to fold it over, you don't be working with too thin elastic because it could get quite tricky and of course, then could feel like it cuts in a little bit on your body. 12 mil to 20 mil, to be quite honest, is a good amount. When we measure the fold over elastic width, it's all of the width and not just the when you fold it on the half. I like that. This is another folder of elastic here. I think this is 19 mill wide, actually. Again, you just fold over. The wider they are, the easier they are to sew as well. If you want something a bit easier to sew, then definitely get a wider one. And this has a really nice plushness to it as well. That's really comfortable when that's sewn. This one is a shiny one and then it's plain on the inside it's plain on this side and it's shiny on this side. You can choose which side you can have on when you have the shiny or the plane. If you wanted to plain, you could sew it like that. Then if you wanted the shiny, you can sew it like that. That's the folder of elastic, really good elastic for use for kicasewing. So the other elastics that you might use, maybe not quite as often, but this is a waistband elastic. If you want a wider waistband, then you would use something like this. It can be used on its own or it can be covered as well. One side is plush and the other side is normal, the plain style, you'd want the plush side against the body because that's the soft side. That. With the waistband, you can get anywhere between, I'd say two and 5 centimeters wide. This is 3 centimeters wide, which is quite a nice width, actually. Then the other thing often used is stretch lace edging. So this is a very narrow lace, galloon edge lace. We'll talk a lot more about lace in Module four as well. I won't go into all the details, but this is really nice to use on the leg holes because it's very soft and you know you're not going to have any problems with the elastic digging in. The only thing I will say with this is that it the stretch retention isn't often quite as good as the normal elastics. You do sometimes have to use an elastic inside because otherwise, you'll find that, particularly over the bump cheeks, you'll find that the lace edging won't hold the fabric down and you'll end up with a wedge. But it really depends on the design as well. And then with that also, the last one I'm going to show you is a clear elastic. Now this is mostly used in swimwear. You can use it from na Elastic as well. For example, if you were using the lace edging, you could use the clear elastic underneath. You won't see it on top, but it will give that extra stability so then your kickers don't move around as much. You can use that like that. 4. How to measure for your size Skills share: So for this module, we are going to be creating the honey knickers. The honey knickers are a stretch bikini breath kicker, we'll be working with stretch fabrics and elastics as well. It's really good pattern to get you into lingre sewing. So here I've created a creation guide. This is a quick reference guide that tells you the fabrics, the elastics, the stitches, and also the elastic tension as well. You can print this out or look at it as you're sewing if you need a reminder of anything, but of course, I'll be going through all of that in the video tutorials in this module as well. But the first thing you need to do is to choose your size. Choosing your size for this pattern is very simple. You simply need a soft tape measure like this and of course, you need your body. All you need to do is measure the circumference of two different places in your body. The most important place that you need to measure is your low hip or full hip area. That is number two on this illustration here. This goes around usually the largest part of the lower body. Around the fullness of the bum and across the pelvis and pubic bone as well on the front. Take this measurement as close as you can to your body without pulling it too hard. Then the second measurement, which is not so important for this pattern is your waist. Your waist is your natural waistline here and it is the middle of the lower and upper part of your torso. It is just where your ribs end and then that's the soft part of your body, then that is your natural waist. So then you just need to take the measurements to the chart here. You can measure either in inches or centimeters and there's nine different sizes. It goes from 34 " of your low hip to 50 " of your low hip. Then it also tells you how much fabric you need of both. But as you'll see, when we go through the lectures, you can often use remnants or scraps as well for kicker patterns like this. For instance, my low hip measures 38 ". I would pick the size three, and it just so happens that my waist measures 28 " as well. Always go by your low hips. If your low hips measure 40 ", and your waist is 34 ", then always choose the low hips for this pattern. 5. Materials for the knicker pattern Skills share: So these are the fabrics that I've chosen for the knickers that we're going to make. This e is a really pretty, it's a single jersey knit and it has 5% elastinum and it's an organic cotton, so it's a really nice, comfortable fabric to wear. So I've got a long strip of this. Here at the end is the salvage here, and then we've got a nice long strip to play with. The great thing about when you're making lingerie, you don't need lots of fabric. You can use scraps and this was actually a remnant that I had. I thought this would be the perfect thing to use. Then with this, we also have the elastic. I think you've seen these in this elastic in my other video, but it's really pretty elastic I thought that would just look really lovely. That. Here we've got a six mill so part of the elastic here. That makes it really easy to work with because the seam allowances we have on the Nia are six mill as well. So I've tested the stretch percentage as well for the fabric and the elastic for the stretch percentage for the fabric, it's about 55% in the direction of greater stretch and about 45% in the other way the least stretch. For this pattern, we need 50% stretch, that's fine. You can go about 10% either way and you're not going to really notice any fit problems. So this elastic here actually has not as much as I thought, it has 70% stretch, so we might have to take that into account when we're sewing it, maybe just not pull it as much as we would usually. Then also what I wanted to show you is how to use elastic that has a wider spar than your pattern. If your pattern has six mil seam allowance and your elastic has eight mil you can either change the pattern, so you can add a bit extra on the seamounts on your paper pattern before you cut out your fabric, or you can adapt it as you sew. When we get sewing, I'll show you how to also sew an elastic that is wider than the seamounts as well. Then for the gusset liner we'll be using a regular cotton jersey with elastin in it as well. 6. Putting together your paper print out Skill Share: So after you've printed your pattern off, you should have several sheets of paper. You probably already know what size you're going to make, but here is the pattern size key. If you're going to make a size five, for instance, then you would look for this line on the pattern, which is this one here. So you need to remember what type of line you're following. Now you need to put the pattern together. This does involve a bit of taping and cutting. On the bottom part of the pattern, you will see, I'm not sure if you can see this too well. My printer has decided to print out in a redy orange color. I think one of the inks was getting low. If you lay out your pages with the lowest page number start first, so 18 19. We can see the pattern pieces start to come together. Now I'm going to go off the table here. I'll stick these together first, and then we will move on. These ones would go on the other part of the table, which we can't see. Firstly, you need to use your paper scissors and you need to cut down this line here. Now, in each corner of every page, we have little triangle shape, and that is where they all connect at the bottom and then at the top as well. But you can obviously see where the lines connect as well on the pattern. When it comes to a page that doesn't have anything connecting to it, there won't be a triangle on the edge. It's up to you. You can either just cut off one side, we can cut off both sides and then you just need to put the tape put the tape down and tape them together. What's really handy with laundro patterns is they don't take very long to tape together. I don't know if you've ever taped up an outwear pattern, but it can be very time consuming. If you put the tape on the back like that, and then you can line it up and stick it down. There we go. And then that should all connect well. If for some reason, it doesn't connect well, it's because there has been something wrong with the printing. But hopefully that won't happen. Another thing I forgot to mention in the beginning was because I can barely see it due to the printer not printing it out too well, but we've also got a scale on the top here, so it goes from naught to 4 centimeters and naught to 2 ". Check this, measure this and check that this is what it actually is. So measure this against a ruler and make sure that's correct because then you know that the printing is printed out fine. So if you then carry on and do the next pages, I'm just going to carry on and connect the next one. When you do cut out the paper, you want to cut on the line, so as on the line as you can. If you keep it quite precise, then you won't have any mismatches or anything. I've just added on the extra page, had a little bit of a fight with the tape here, well, managed to get it off, so that's fine. As you can see, this is the back part of the kicker and then the other pages we would need. This one here, as you can see goes underneath. They're all numbered anyway, so you can follow the numbers. But I tend to just look at the pattern when I cut it out for easy pattern like this, it's quite easy to see. Then we've also got this side bite. That one goes underneath there, which has also got the gusset liner on as well. Then that side would go there. I'm going to do the exact same thing, connect these together, and then after I've connected these, I will then connect that to these three pages. I've taped those up, but I haven't taped it down all of the way. I've just taped it where it needs to be taped because there's no point taping something where it's going to be thrown away anyway. I'm not actually using any of these gusset patterns because they're not the right size for me, so I'm not going to be using them, so this is going to go to waste anyway. So I t not do. We'll see. I've just used the tape where it needs to be. Then once you've taped that part up, you need to move onto the front part. We've got a few more pages to tape together, and we just do them in the exact same way. That one goes there. And then the rest of them as well. Here we go. I've now put the front part of the neck together. I actually decided not to attach it on there because I realized that wasn't my size anyway, I'm using a size three, so I needed this page anyway. So, when you cut out your side, you can check, you might not need to tape it altogether. Again, I've just taped it where it needs to be because like I said, at no point using tape if you're just going to throw it away. So once you've taped all your pieces together, then you can just go ahead. Follow the line, that's your size, and then cut it out and make sure you cut it out as accurately as you possibly can. So if you cut it on the line, then you'll have a really good accurate pattern. So I'm going to cut out the front, the gusset, and back here as well. We now have our three pieces cut out. The very last thing and very important thing that you need to now do is to mark in your notches. If you've got a notch tool like this, it's very simple, you just hole punch the notch out like that. Otherwise, you would just use paper scissors. Like that. So the notches make it a lot easier to sew all the pieces together. So we make sure we're sewing it all in the right place. So once you've done that, we're now ready to cut out our fabrics. 7. 3 Method Cutting Out SKill Share: So now on to cutting out the fabrics. I'm going to show you three different techniques you can choose which one would be best for you. There's going to be one. I'm going to be using the rotary cutter. Two, I'm going to be using the pins and scissors. Three, I'm going to be drawing around the pattern and then cutting out like that. The first thing you may notice about this jersey is that it rolls. With single jerseys like this, they do often roll and it is very annoying when you come to cut out your fabrics and make a garment. But I have a little technique that I use for annoying fabrics like this. I basically stick the fabric down to the cutting mat, then it's all laid out as flat as I possibly can get it. So I simply take a bit of tape and I stick one end to the other end like that. And then stick the very edge on like that and then it can't move anywhere. Another bit. You don't need to do the whole entire bit. You just need to do at certain points so it doesn't keep rolling up. This is the technique that I use is quite effective actually. You don't want anything too sticky because you will struggle getting it off your cutting mat, which will then be more of a hindrance than a help. This brown tape is perfect. Whilst I'm sticking it down, I'll also just explain. So the main stretch, as we've learned in Module one, is going across the width of the fabric. Here is the salvage here. You can see that quite clearly. It also has these little dots in as well and the edge just feels rougher, it's not as soft. Down this way would be the length of the fabric, so the warp of the fabric and across the fabric, the width of the fabric would be the weft of the fabric. There we go. As you can see, that is looking a lot better to work with. W lingerie patterns, because the pattern pieces are so small, you don't really have to place all of the pattern pieces out like you would do if you were making, I don't know, something like a coat, you'd probably have to place all the pattern pieces onto the fabric before you cut anything out, but you don't have to do that with lingerie. And I actually prefer not to do that because then it's easier to move your fabric around. If you're using a remnant fabric and maybe it's got a bit cut out, you place your pattern piece in the right area. If we start with our first pattern piece. This is the back and the main stretch is going that way. That's perfect because on the fabric, we've got the main stretch going this way as well. When you put your pattern pieces down, don't go over the salvage here because it does feel rougher and we don't want to have that in our knickers. Because we've got the main stretch going this way. Now what I often do with stretch fabrics is I actually fold the pattern piece in half, this would be perpendicular to the mainstretch. Although you can have this parallel to the salvage, which you would definitely do on woven fabrics. Sometimes the knit doesn't actually match the salvage. The best thing to do is to line it up against the lines going down on your knitted jersey. You might not be able to do this on all fabrics, but you can definitely do it on jerseys. If I follow this line going down here, I know that I'm using the length of the fabric here and then anything that way is going to be the width, which is where the main stretch is, and then I open it up. Then if I'm using a pattern weight and rotary scissors, which we are going to be using on this one, I would then put that in place. I've got my pattern weight here. I place one in the middle and then a few around the edge. The more pattern weights you have the better. Et's put cheese. Perfect, and that's all you need. Don't need any more than that. Now, ideally, I would like to cut closer to this edge here because we've got such a curve going on, it would be a little bit tricky to cut that close. This is perfect. Once you've got your pattern placed onto the fabric, you need to mark in the notch and that is very important. When we do the gusset, you'll see how important that will be. So I've got my marking tools here. When you mark your not, you want to make sure you use a tool that is a different color to the fabric, otherwise, it's going to be really hard to see. Here I've got the erasable ink pen. This is a erasers overtime. We've got the tailor's chalk and we've got the dressmakers pencil. I quite like using the tailor's chalk for this because the tailor's chalk comes out quite easily as well. Sometimes this can be a bit temperamental, so I'm using the duck maybe. Hopefully I should be able to see that. Mark it in. Yeah, that's fine. I can see that. You'll need the rotary cutter. You've either got a 28 mill or a 45 mill. It's definitely easier to cut ingre pattern pieces with the 28 mils. I advise that. If you've got the 45 45 mil, that's absolutely fine as well. So my top tips for cutting out using a rotary cutter, you want to always be cutting away because if you're cutting into yourself, not only is that dangerous, but also you don't have very good control of the rotary cutter and it's a very dodgy angle. I always start somewhere close to me. If your blade is sharp, you won't have to press too hard. Then just follow the edge as you can see. It's all going well. I'm using a little bit of pressure here. My blade isn't actually too sharp. I need to get some more, but it's fine. Now, if you have a fiddly bit, which we don't really have on these knickers actually, what I would do is leave the fiddly bit to last. Cut out all the easy lengths and then go back to the fiddly bit. As I'm coming this way, I'm moving my body this side. I'm always trying to cut away from my body. Then I'll start here. But do be very careful when you use a rotary cutter because you can easily cut yourself, and I definitely have done that a few times it is really sharp and it's really sore. It's a worse version than a paper cut, just be really careful when you use the rotary cutter. And then we'll be able to pull the fabric away. That's okay because we stuck it down. Sometimes there's a few little bits here, it's just not come away. If you have lots of bits that haven't cut, that means it's definitely time to change your blade. But that's actually not too bad on mine. I think I only had one bit here I haven't quite cut to the edge. So take your weights off. Then that's your back piece cut out. As you can see that was very quick, is very quick with the rotary cutter and that's why I love. This is my favorite method of cutting out because it's so quick and it's so precise as well. Then keep your pattern piece with your fabric piece so you don't get confused. I'm going to put that to one side. So now on to cutting our front out. I have taped the fabric down. Again, I've only done on this side because we're not going all the way down. In this method, I'm going to show you how to use pins and scissors. Again, we'll fold our pattern piece in half, perpendicular to the main stretch or direction or greater stretch. Again, just finding the line on the knit that I'm going to follow down. I think that's pretty much perfect, actually. I open that back out again. Now, we're not using pattern weights, so I'm not going to heat and use any. Put your pin in the middle. There we go. You know that it's sitting well, I would put a few in actually. Put one at the top, one at the bottom, in the middle and then it's not going to move out of place because that is the thing when you pin your fabrics, it can easily move more out of place. Again, we'll mark the notch. And now, you may wonder why I am not cutting these kickers on the fold. If you've used pattern pieces before and there's symmetrical either side, then often it says cut on the fold. Now that does save paper. Don't get me wrong. But because laundry has to be so precise and when we're using stretch fabrics, the fabrics can slide a lot. They can move a lot and it can actually be quite tricky to cut your fabrics out well. If you're cutting on the fold. Obviously, it really does depend on fabric you're using. But I have been taught by very skilled people to always cut your fabrics flat with either side and not to cut them on the fold for lingerie pattern pieces. I have to agree with that from my experience as well. When I have tried to cut things on the fold, it has just been a lot harder to do. That is why I don't create pattern pieces that cut on the fold. Take your pins. We're using the glass headed pins. And start off close to your holding pins here. We want to put the pins along the edge. Like that. We don't want them sticking out or even sticking in, to be quite honest, because when you're cutting out, there's more chance that the pin is going to scratch you or wherever. We always put it along the edge like that. Now, when you're putting the pin in, I know it sounds obvious, but make sure it's sharp. If it's not sharp, it's going to rock the fabric up. It's going to rock that up and then of course, the fabric is moved. Make sure the pin is sharp and that is why we use these pins. Now, do all the areas close to the holding pins first? Because we know the holding pins are right, so we want to do the areas close to the holding pins and then we'll do the outer edges after that. If you start off doing this edge and you didn't have the holding pins in, by the time you got to this side, everything might have shifted. You can put in as many pins as you like as well. Don't be afraid to put in as many pins. There, it's just slightly rucked and that's because the paper is thicker just there. I'm going to pull that out and I'm just going to move that along a little bit. It's still rocking up a little bit. There we go. You really don't want any rucks at all. So as you can see, this is a more time consuming method because you're using the rotary cutter and the weights, I would have already started cutting out by now. Once we've done the main part, then we can go onto the edges and pin them. Now, if you can, try and get as close to the corner as possible because those are going to be the trickiest parts to cut out. What I might do is put another one on this corner here. Perhaps another one here. All the pins want to be inside of the pattern piece. Take your fabric scissors, so your sharp scissors. Again, it's the same with the rotary cutter, we cut away. We don't hold the fabric up to us. We keep the fabric on the table and cut with the scissors touching the table like this. If you start to pull the fabric piece up, you might be able to with a smaller fabric piece, but it's just more likely that the fabric is going to skew. If you just cut along the edge, as close as you can without cutting the paper. When you come to the corners, if you're on a table like me, you need to try and turn your body outside. Then I'm going to come down this way. And then also keep your hand on the table, keep your pattern piece, nice and flat. And then it's just this last bit to do here. And there we go. So that's done as well. So the reason why we don't cut into notches is because the seam allowances are so small, so they're only six mill. So if we cut too far, we're going to be cutting beyond the seam allowance into the main part of our garment. So we never cut the notches and nonro pans. So we go and then take your pins out. I can assure you this won't be quite as smooth as the atie cutter. Let's have a cat. That's not too bad. Actually, that is actually smoother than I thought it was going to be, another way you can cut your pattern pieces out if you don't have a rotary cutter and pattern weights. The last pattern piece we've got to cut is the outer gusset. You can use this pattern piece for the outer and the liner because they're exactly the same. Again, fold it in half. And then match up the line and then pull it out. With this method, I'm just going to put the pattern way there so I keep holding it for a minute. For this method, we're going to be drawing around the pattern piece, and then we're going to be cutting out with the fabric scissors. Let's mark the notches, first of all, Let's pretend we don't have the pattern weight. So if I didn't have the pattern weight, I would use something else as a pattern weight. To be quite honest, it would be easier or I could just hold it down with my hand if the pattern piece isn't too big. For this one, I'm going to use the erasable pen. I'm not going to use the dressmakers pencil or the tailor's chalk because they often with stretched fabrics will pull so you can see how it pulls out especially along the main stretch of the fabric there. So I'm going to use the more slideer tool that I've got, which will slide along the fabric much better. I'm just simply going to draw around the pan piece. The thing is with the erasable pen, you don't often know how long you've got until it erases itself. On some fabrics, it disappears very quickly and on others, it doesn't and sometimes it doesn't disappear at all. So if you are going to use this method, cut it out straight away after you've drawn around it because you might not be able to see the lines later on. We're just going to use the fabric scissors again in the same way as we did the other ones. We'll keep the fabric on the cutting map. We're not going to lift it up or anything. I'm just going to cut inside of the line that we've just drawn because we've drawn just outside of the pattern piece. We need to cut on the inner edge of our line. So follow that round. Slowly go. That one's actually quicker than the pinning one as well. Let's do a little evaluation of them all. Here we've got the pins and scissors. The back, we've cut out with the rotary cutter, and that was definitely the quickest one to cut out. That's the quickest one. It's also the most precise. The line is the most smoothest. As you can tell, that's my favorite one and that's the one that I use. Let's go to the pin the line isn't quite as smooth. It's not too bad. I was quite careful, but I do have a few little pin marks in my fabric. That's another thing if you are using very special fabric or very fine fabric like silk or something, be really careful you don't use blunt pins because they will pull your fabric and you may then ruin your garment. So this one took the longest one out of the three and then we've got this one where we drew around it. This one was fairly precise and that was not too slow either. That's quite quick to do. The only thing is sometimes I can just see a little bit of the purple pen. Either that's bled in just under where I was going around it or I haven't quite cut as precisely as I needed to. But that is fairly smooth and quite a precise way of doing it as well. These are three choices for cutting out. 8. Sewing the Gusset Seams Skill Share : So now we get to garment construction. The first part of the construction we need to do is to attach the gusset pieces to the front and back of the kicker. Now, I love doing this fast because within your first two seams, you have attached all of your pattern pieces together, so there's no chance of you losing them. The method I'm going to be showing you is where we have what we call a seamless gusset. The seam, you won't be able to see the seam of the front and the back gusset. It will be all tucked inside and all neat. So traditionally, that method is called the bagging out method, where the seams are inside and you can't see them. So we're going to use the bagging out method, but we're also going to use the Brito method. The Brito method is a really simple way to do this method without getting confused. The first thing you need to do is get your back pattern piece. Here we have our background. You can actually start with the front or the back. It's up to you, but I tend to start with the back because it's just a tiny bit more harder because the seam is longer and slightly more curved. If we start off of the hardest one first, then we know we've only got more easy ones to do. So we're attaching the gusset liner and the gusset outer with the back of the Nia. Before we get into it, I just want to emphasize again to make sure that your notches are all marked. If they're not, sometimes you just forget or whatever. Then at this stage, just mark them on. All my notches are on, so that's good because we will need them when we're doing this. Take your gusset liner and place it right side up. This is the side that is going to be touching your skin. Then take your back piece and place the back gsm over the back gustesm of the liner, like that. Now take the gusala turn it around, you've got right side facing right side. Right side of your gusset out facing the right side of your back knickers. We're going to be joining the back gusset seam together. This is where the notches come in really handy. What we're doing is sandwiching the back kicker in between the two gusset pieces. Now we need to attach the gusset seam together. Because we've got our notches on, we can join our notches up first. Because we know that's the middle. Join notches up first. You can do this one layer at a time if you find it easier. Let's just put a pin in. Here we go. We put a pin going up, perpendicular to the seam then we've got that in place and then take another pin. You can also put your notch on the other side. So at the moment, obviously, I can't see my notch because it's on the underside, so you could put your notches on both sides, which really helps as well. I've now matched the back gusset seam notch up with these notches here, and then I'm pinning those together as well, and I'm going to take that original pin out. Then you want to continue pinning the rest of the gusset seam. Now take your time with this because you're working with three layers together. It can be a bit tricky, it's not the easiest and obviously with stretch fabric as well. When you pin the edges up, you don't put the edges together like that because that is the sem wants. That isn't the edge of the actual se line. So you have to remember that you've got six mill seam allowance. If I just use my take measure, for instance, six mill comes to here. That is where we are going to start sewing. That means we need to have fabric matching at that point. Because it's slightly different angle, you can see how the fabric crosses over at this point, six mills in from the edge of the gusset seam allowance. If you pin that one in place first, and then you can bring the other layer up and pin that one as well, you can take that one out. We put a new one in, it's up to you. That is how your edges should look. And then do the same with the other side, have the sharp bit of the pin facing into the garment and then continue to pin the rest of the seam. Now, because this is a curved seam, it is a little bit trickier. We're putting a outward curve to an inward curve here, so a concave curve here. This one needs to be brought up. What can often happen is that can slip too far down and then you have a hole in your seam. If you bring that up, again, in the middle of the two pins, and then put the pin through there. One thing you can do to help you pin these together is just pull the seam out very slightly so it's straighter. These can be a little bit fiddly, so don't worry about if it's taking you a bit of time. Then I would advise adding a few more pins in the middle of those pins as well. The more pins you've got in, the more the fabric is holding in place and then less likely things are going to go wrong. You've got a nice set of pins in there and then can do the same on the other side. There we go. That's how your gusset seam should look. Just put that pin on that side as well. We're now at the same machine and we're now going to sew the back gusset seam. Make sure you've got your stretch needle in. I've got my 75 stretch needle in. Firstly, we're going to do a straight stitch. I've got a three straight stitch, so it's slightly longer than normal. Remember, if you can take your knee or thread to the back, this will help you in a moment when we start to sew. And then place your seam under the presser foot. But as we went through in Module one, don't start right at the edge. Come in a few mill and then make sure you've got your thread at the back as well. Often, with this seam, the under fabric can be taken under the bed of the machine. So line your foot up because we're using a six mill seam allowance and then start to sew. And then take your pins out as you go. It's best not to go over your pins if possible. Because they are perpendicular to the seam, you can go over them, but be careful if you do because they can still break even this way. But I always take mine out as I sew just to make sure. So go nice and slowly. Then you cook. And there we go. So if we turn that on the back, that's se nicely as well. And it hasn't been taken under the machine, that's great. We're also going to use a zigzag stitch now. It is possible just to use a straight stitch on the front and back gusset seam, because the seams are going inside anyway. But to make it an extra secure seam, you can then put the zigzag stitch over. If we go to use the zigzag stitch, the inner part of my zigzag, I'm aiming for it to hit the stitch but not going inside of the stitch. Okay. There we go. That so nicely. Now I'm going to take it back to the table and show you how to attach the front of the kicker. You'll now see why this is called the burrito method. When we attach the front nor part. All we need to do is it's already start to roll for me because this fabric is so curly. We just need to roll the back piece down like that, and then have the two gusset pieces over. There you go. That's pretty much the burrito part where you basically roll the fabric that's being sandwiched inside. And then we want to attach the front here. Then you need to place this inside. We've got right side to right side here, and then we've got right side to wrong side here, right side of the gusset liner to wrong side of the front of the kicker. Then we just do the same thing how we did the back, we put the notches together, put the pin in we put the pins in at the two edges, and then we continue to pin in the middle of those pins. So that's all pinned and now ready to be sewn. Okay, so now we need to sew the front seam just like we did the back seam. One thing I wanted to mention, so it's easier to sew with the most stable fabric on top because the pressure of the foot can somewhat sometimes drag the fabric. So when I sewed the last seam, it was fine, but I sewed on this side. Now, this fabric here is actually a little bit slinky. I've actually used a bamboo and organic cotton jersey for the liner and it is a bit slinky. If you have trouble with sewing your seams, if you can, if you have a more stable fabric, the more stable of my two fabrics is the cotton jersey, not the gusset liner. Then try and sew with that side facing upwards because it's going to be a lot easier to sew with. Okay, so make sure you've got your needle thread to the back again. Again, we're using the straight stitch line your foot up for a six mil seam allowance. Come in a few mil. Don't start right at the edge. And then take your pins out as you go. Okay. That's a nice six more seams we've got there and it's looking good the other side as well. You might wonder because we're not going all the way to the edge at the beginning, does that matter? Well, it doesn't, not on this seam, it doesn't because we're going to be using elastic on this edge anyway, so it doesn't matter. We don't need to make sure that that is secure all the way to the edge. Yeah, then I'm going to do this exact stitch again. Another medium, at stitch. Again, make sure I got my thread. Pull it to the back. And when you're sewing this seam, try not to stretch anything because it's stretch fabric, it will want to stretch. So to have the seams le flat, you want to try not to stretch any of the fabric, you just want to guide it through. There we go. That's all nicely stitched at the back as well. The big reveal in a minute, we'll take that to the table. If you do have long threads, if your machine doesn't automatically cut, then at this point, just trim those down because they could become annoying. You don't have to deal with extra threads where you don't need to. Then all we do now, pull it the right way and you have all of your pieces attached together. All of the seams nicely hidden. Your first two seams are your best two seams because you've got all of your pieces now attached together, that's great. So the last part of doing the gusset is we want to make sure that this open part here is secured down so that when we're doing the elastic, the two pieces don't move around. So we're going to do a basting stitch either side here. So when I said earlier about always work with the most stable fabric up, I'm going to flip this around and we're going to sew it this way. It's less likely that the foot will drag the fabric because this is a slightly less stable fabric. If you put your pins in at the seam allowance and make sure it's all flat, you haven't got any bulges or anything with the pins facing inwards as well. And then one pin in the middle with the two edges flushed together. Then again, another pin in the middle of those ones, and then another pin in one of those ones. Then turn it around and do the same on the other side. There we go. So that's all pinned and prepared for the basting. So let's take it to the machine. Okay, so now we are going to baste these two layers together. So I'm going to put my stitch length, so I've got a straight stitch and then I'm going to put it to a 3.5 for this one. If you try and stitch within six mil, so I advise probably four mill in from the edge of your fabric here, then you're not going over the seam allowance area. You want to stitch in the seam allowance. And then you don't have to go all the way right to the top off the scene. You can again start about 3 million, and that just helps with the bulk as well. If you've got a lot of bulk going through the machine, it's more likely to cause problems. So just come in a bit and then start stitching. Now, because we're not starting at the edge of the fabric like we were before, there's not really much chance that the fabric is going to be taken down to the bed, so we didn't need to make sure that we held a thread at the back or anything. So again, remember not to stretch any of the fabric. Okay. So we have some nice basting stitches. And as you can see, I didn't start right from the top. It's not necessary to and then do the other side, so turn the nick around. So you start from the opposite end that you started from before. There we have it. That is the two gussets, the gust out, the gusset liner attached to the back and front of the ******. 9. Sewing the Side Seams skill share: So the next thing we now need to do is to attach the side seems together. You can either apply your elastic at this stage around your leg holes, or you can sew up your side them first and then do your elastic after. We'll do that way because when you do the elastic at this stage, you have the elastic bulk within the slide seams. Whereas if you sew up the side seam first, then you won't have the elastic bulk in the slide seams. Firstly, you want to put your nicer right side to right side, front, right side to the back, right side. Then we need to match up the seams. The top edge is fairly straight, so that should match up quite easily. So put your pin in there. Then if we just turn it over because it'll be easier to see. Because we've got a slight curve on one side, remember, we need to measure six melt in and then that's where the two fabric pieces cross there. Once you've found that place, put a pin in and then put one more pin in the middle of them like that. Then repeat that on the other side. So you've now got both sides pinned, so we take it to the machine. Okay, so now we are going to sew the side seams up. So we're going to do this in the same way that we've done the Gus it seems. So we're going to use straight stitch and then we're going to use this exact stitch. So if you do find that your fabric is being pulled under the bed of the machine here when we first start, you've tried all the tips I've said about holding the thread back, starting further in and it's still not playing ball. You can use a stabilizing fabric and you just put it underneath and you only need to sew it on the first few stitches, which then stops it going underneath the bed of the machine. I'll put a link to a stabilizing fabric in this lecture. And then you can just cut away the rest of the stabilizing fabric. Let's do the straight stitch first. Hold the thread at the back. Make sure you'll start on a few mill in. There we go. That's the straight stitch. You can get away with just doing the straight stitch on the seam because there's not much pressure on it to stretch. But I advise to do the zag next to it, so we'll do that. Again, we'll use the medium size zag, 3.5. I'm going to use a three length. 3.5 width and three length. Again, make sure you hold your thread at the back. Start a little way in. And there you have it. You can then trim down the seam if you want to, let's just trim it down a little bit because Mozigzag hasn't come right to the edge. Make it just to look a little bit neater on the inside. There we go. Then just repeat what you've done here on the other side. Is that as you can see? That's all looking nice. Don't forget we've got the elastic going over this bit, so it doesn't matter that the stitch just come right to the edge of the fabric. And before you do snip anything off, then just make sure that you've sewn all correctly because that's the worst thing when you've trimmed down your seam allowances, and then you realize it hasn't sewn right and you need to re sew it, but now you've got even thinner seam allowances. So that on that side? Turn your kickers and it should all now be attached at the side seems like that. Three. 10. Working out Stretch Elastic % Reduction Skill Shar: Okay, now we're on to applying the elastics. The elastics are a very important part when it comes to laundry sewing because it's one of the things that you pretty much have to do on every garment. The more experienced we are with applying elastics, the easier laundry making will become. The great part about this is that there are a few different methods and a few different ways that we can do it. So if we're beginner, say, we can do it in a beginner way. If we're slightly more intermediate, we can do it in an intermediate way and if we are more advanced, then we can do it in a more advanced way. As this is only the second module, we're going to be starting off in a more of a beginner way. With what I call beginner one A. I'm going to be going through that method. Then the other methods, we're going to be applying them throughout the course on other garments. By the end of the course, you will have learned how to do the more experienced ways. The method that I want to show you on the kickers is a method where we need to work out the length of the edges where we're applying elastic. We're applying the elastic on the leg holes and the waist here. We need to work out the length of the sew line. And then we're going to be cutting the elastic to length before we apply it, and then we're going to be using what's called the pin and quarter method where you pin the elastic on the area that you want to sew it equally. However, because I'm going to show you the beginner one A method, we are not actually going to be applying it equally on the garment in some areas. That's because the elastic tension isn't applied equally on different parts of the garment. Let's take our nicks here. The front leg hole here, if that was pulled too tight, that could be uncomfortable. It also doesn't really need to be pulled very tight. You don't need to have a lot of tension on it because that part of the body doesn't move. Whereas the back leg hole here, where the bum is. Now, the bum does move when you're walking, and of course, as we all know, the bum comes out and then it creates a curve underneath and the fabric needs to be able to grip under the bum cheeks. Because we want the elastic to be more effective there. We need to create more tension on the elastic, so it's going to cup under the bum. So how we do that is we just put more elastic tension on that part. We have less tension here and we have more tension on the back. Then the waist is very similar to the front part here. We don't really have much moving on the waist. Of course, we want them to stay up. If your nick and steve fall down, then I suggest the sizing isn't quite right. Um so for the waist, we put a similar tension that we put in on the leg hole to the waist. We are effectively using negative E's on the elastic length. What we'll do we'll measure the leg holes first, and then we are going to be reducing the amount by a particular percentage. Now, the percentages do vary on different types of kickers. This isn't a one technique or method, but it's a good place to start. So firstly, let's measure the areas we're going to put the elastic on. We don't actually measure the actual fabric garment. Because this is stretched fabric, there is a possibility that it has stretched out just for a very tiny amount, but then it could affect the measurements. We actually measure the paper pattern. So I bring the paper pattern over here. However, of course, the pattern has seam allows on, and that isn't the part we need to measure. Firstly, unfortunately, we do have to take the seam Aounces off before we measure it. Otherwise, we're measuring the wrong part. I'm now going to show you how to do that. Okay, so because we're only putting elastic on the waist and leg hole edges, then those are the places that we need to take the seamounce on the pattern. Let's start with the gusset Nice small pattern, you'll need a ruler for this. So place the zero at the edge of the pattern and then simply mark six mill in like that. Your pattern should always say what seam allowance is it has on it. Whether you're using this pattern or a different pattern, it should say. And then when we get to the corners, we just need to do the corner so we know where the six mile comes into. So Where the lines cross, that's where we start to measure. From here down to here. But you don't need to create the whole line. You can do if you want, but it's not really necessary. Of course, the pattern is symmetrical, so we only need to do on one side because we only need to know one leg hole. Then you need to take your tape measure. And place the zero at one edge with the tape measure standing upwards. This might feel a bit of a weird way to measure. But this is how we measure curves. If you put your zero at the start where the lines cross, and then if you follow your marks you've made, follow all the way around. Then mine says 14.2 and then write the measurement on. That's 14.2 centimeters. To know the rest of the measures, the leg hole, we need to do the front leg hole and then the back leg hole. So I'm going to repeat the same process that we've done on the gusset pattern on this edge and this edge here. I've now measured my front leg hole and leg hole edge of the gusset piece. I've added all of the measurements up together, and I've got 55.4 centimeters. Before I do anything with that number, I'm going to do the same process to the waist the back and the front waist as well. Now I have measured the waist as well, the front waist and the back waist and then added those together. For the waist, we have 70.1 centimeters. I'll write that in pen. Because I'm not sure if the pencil will see on the video. Then for the leg hole. Again, we've added the front, the back, and this side of the gusset. That equals 55.4 centimeters. That's the leg hole. Okay. Now we need to do a little bit of mathematics. Now I have actually already done the equation because I needed my phone for the maps and I also record of my phone as well. I have already that ideally, the waste needs to be reduced, I would say, 3-5%. The waste elastics need to be reduced by three and 5%. We're going to reduce this by 4% on this pattern. We need to take the full waist measurement, and then we need to work out what that is -4%. So it's a really simple equation. If you imagine one is 1%, two is 2%, ten is 10%, 55 is 55%, then all we are doing is taking 4% away. If we times 70.1 by one, we get the same number. But if we times it by 0.96, which is four less than 100, then we have taken the 4% reduction away in one simple equation. 70.1 centimeters times 0.96 equals 67.29. We can call that 67.3 centimeters. Then it's that simple, let's just write the 4% reduction here so we can see what we've done. 4% reduction. 70.1 times 0.96 because 0.96 is four less than one. For the leg hole, we do the same thing. However, we do a different percentage reduction. As I explained earlier, the leg hole is a bit different because we need more reduction on the back. So because of that, we're going to increase the amount we are reducing it by. On the leg hole, we're going to be reducing it by 8%. Usually with leg holes on patterns, I would say the reduction is 6-10% depending on the pattern, excluding what even patterns. For an 8% reduction, we need to times our number here by 0.92 because that's not a less than one. 0.92 equals 50.96. We can call that one 51 centimeters. The back needs to be reduced more. For instance, if we're dividing this 8% reduction up, we would reduce the back 5-6%, and then the front would only be reduced by two to 3%. That's what we're going to do when we pin and quarter the elastic on, but we haven't got to that stage yet. There's another thing we need to do to these numbers. We need to add on the seam allowance. Because we're putting the elastic on the round, we don't have to add on the seam allowance at the side seam because we've already put that together, but we are going to be overlapping the elastic in the gusset area. We're going to be overlapping it about 1 centimeter about here. We need to add on that to the measurements. The same with the waste as well. We're going to be overlapping the elastic just on the backside of the side seam by 1 centimeter. We need to add on that. The waste is 67.3, let's say meter plus 1 centimeter on, that will be 68.3 centimeter. Then for the leg hole, we've got 50 1 centimeter plus 1 centimeter equals 52 centimeter. Don't worry. I will put some information about the measurements that you need to do on the lecture as well. Don't worry, you don't have to try and read my scribbly writing. Yes, now we have the cut lengths. We can now cut our elastic out. So if we're cutting the waist, when you're cutting the elastic, don't pull it, make sure that it's as flat as you can get it because you don't want to pull it, and then actually you've reduced it by too much. What I got 6,068.3. My cutting board doesn't go to that, so I'm going to take it at 50. 5,068.3. I quite like to use a roti cutter when I cut this. 68.3. That's my waist. Then we want two times the leg holes, 52 times two. There we go, 52. That's one of my leg holes. And another 52. That's my other leg hole. If you were doing the pin and quarter method, at this stage, you would then find the half of your elastic. Simply fold it in half. You either put a pin in or you mark it. Let's just mark it with se. Then you fold it in half again. To find the quarter, and then you mark it again. Then you do the other side. And then one more last time. Then you would have to then mark the half and the quarter on your waist edge as well. Because the back is slightly longer, it wouldn't actually seemed to seem. It would just be slightly less. Then what you would do is match up your marks, so the half that you've marked on here, you match up there, you match your quarter up, then you match that. That's how you do it equally. But we are going to do it slightly more intuitively. This is the part where I say this is beginner one a. We're not going to be marking on the marks, but you can if you want. If you feel like you want to mark them on, then that's completely up to you and you can do that. The way we're doing it is, we need to join these ends up here. This is the overlap of 1 centimeter. Then whilst we're joining those, we're also going to attach it to the NICA as well. So we need to take that to the machine and do that on there. 11. First pass of Elastication Skill Share: So firstly, take your two leg hole elastic pieces. Now, these are the shorter ones. The waist will be longer. Then you need to have a look at your elastic and see if there's a right or wrong way. On mine, this side is the right side and this side is the wrong side. You need to have the right side of the elastic facing on to the right side of the kicker. Then take the other end of the elastic. Now, make sure it's not twisted and place it 1 centimeter over the end like that. This here is the middle of the gusset. If we put one end in the middle, and then we've got another end in the middle. Now because this elastic is six mil, we know that we need to go right to the edge of the nicer and then we just need to pin it in place. If you pin it lengthwise, we're going to be stitching along this bit. We'll do one at a time. You can at this stage do the other one if you want, but as I'm showing you, I'll just do one at a time. So let's turn the machine on for a start. Now we need to use a very small zigzag, not a bar tech stitch, just a small zigzag stitch. We're going to zig zag along here, but only go to the edge of the sew part of the elastic. Don't go any further because this is the decorative part and then do the same on this side as well. You're blind sewing on this side because you can't see where the underneath ends, but you'll be able to get a good idea. Again, I only go to the end of the sew part of the elastic. It can be a little bit fiddly. Do take your time. I'm going to use a three width and a 1.4 length. I'm just going to take the pin out just before I sew it because otherwise, the needle could potentially break. Now I've got it under the foot, it's all in place. I can now sew it. Then when you get to the edge of the sep, just reverse. You can see that's one side, done. I just need to do the other side. The elastic is now attached on both ends. For the next part, we'll take it back to the table because we need to do a little bit of pining. Now we need to pin the elastic in place. Like I said, she could do the pin in quartering and mark it. But we're going to do it a little bit more intuitively because the more intuitive you can feel the elastic, the more quicker and easier you'll be able to apply it in the long run. So if you take your Nia and the elastic, you want to put one finger in where we've just sewn and the other finger in the edge near the side seam, you just want to pull it until you feel it's equal. Then just pin it where you think it's equal. I've just stretch that out equally. But as you know, because I've told you, the back needs more tension on than the front. I'm just going to look at this and think, do I have too much tension on the front? Or is that sitting quite well for me? Remember, because the back is an outer curve, it will naturally have more tension on it anyway. So I think that's not too bad. That's what you want. You want a big gap at the back. To work out the different tension, you want it so that you do get a bit of a gap when you hold it out, so you can see there's lots of extra material in the back here than there is in the front, and that's because of the curve we've got on the back. I actually don't think I need to adjust that, but what you would do if you think, I've got a bit too much tension on the front, then you would simply just take the pin out and shift it along or shift it this way until you felt that it was right. The more you can feel what's right, the more you can then intuitively do it and it'll be easier to do. For me, I think that's about right, actually. Now you can then pull it out and then pin in the middle. Once I've pulled it out, I walk my fingers back in. It's a little bit tricky, but it's okay for the leg holes and then pin it in place. If you feel like you don't need these extra pins, then you don't need to do them. I just check. Has that bit got the same amount of tension on as that bit? I think that has. I'm going to do the same with the back, pull it out. Walk my fingers into the middle, pop it to the edge. Like that. Then check the back as well. Yeah, it looks good to me. After you've pinned it in place, then you're ready to sew it. Okay, first thing when you're sewing the round, the elastic on the round, take this part of your machine off if you can because it's a lot easier to sew with a small bit ravel a large bit to go around. Starting at the part that we sewed in the middle of the gusset, place that under the foot of the machine. So we are going to be using a zigzag stitch again, as you can see, zigzag stitches are used very frequently in andro sewing. This here is called the first pass of elastication. This is the first stitching line that holds the elastic onto the Nia. I've got my machine set to zigzag. We've got a three width and a 2.5 length. I've got my stretch needle in, of course, I'm aiming to hit the left side of my zigzag. So if you where you've got your pin, hold your pin, and then what then that is doing is stretching the elastic, but it doesn't stretch the fabric. Only the elastic needs to be stretched. Because I've got a six mile elastic here and I've six mill seam allowance, I can just take my elastic right to the edge of the fabric. You can guide it from the back a bit as well if you like. If I was using anything above a six mil elastic, the soap, I would probably use a slightly wider zigzag. I'm using a three at the minute. Then when you get close to this pin, pull on your next pin. Then you can take that out when you get close to it. Then when you get to your side seams, have your seams laying flat to the back of the garment. Take your pin out again and then hold your next pin. We've just done the front leg hole, now we're just about to do the back. Because it's slightly curved, it can be a little bit bit trickier because you've got more tension on it as well. Do you go slowly, take your time. Then when you're getting close to that pin, you can then hold it at where we first started. So take this pin out. When you go over the lumps, I just hold it at the back because it can skew it a bit off otherwise. So you can just hold it at the back a bit to keep it on the right track. The more you do this, the more will become muscle memory. The more your fingers will know where to go and everything coals. The more you do it, the more better you'll get. Then take it off and we have our first pass of elastic done. At this stage is where you want to tidy everything up a bit. Get some fabric scissors or some snips. You see at these seams, this is the back gusset seam. We've got a little bit pokon out. That's from when we done the seam. We're just going to snip that off. We can't see it. There we go. It's in line with the rest of the elastic. I'm going to do that at the front gusset seam as well? There we go. Let's have a look. Side seams not too bad, but we'll just sniff away the threads as well. Then if the fabric is coming over at any other place, I've got a little bit on the front just coming over just here because what's going to happen is now we're going to fold the elastic in and if there's anything poking through beyond the elastic edge, you'll be able to see it. You can just see that tiny bit there. I'm going to trim that down a bit just so you can't see it. It makes it look really professional and really neat. Be careful when you do this because you don't want to accidentally cut into the elastic. There we go. I've just snipped that and then when I fold it over because that's what we're going to be doing next. I can't now see that on the front. Also, you could snip away the seam bulk a bit more. On the front and the back seam, it can be a little bit tricky to go over with the machine, so you can snip away the bulk a bit more, then that's easier to do the next stitching that we're going to do. Don't worry about this bit here that's not joined on the decorative edge. We'll sort that out at the end. Yeah, and then I'll just reduce the bulk on the back part as well. I'm just going to take the scissors around and just make sure that we can't see anything else. This bit is coming through, just a tiny bit. I'm just going to cut that down. Like that. I'm just going to go round and check the rest of it as well. 12. 2nd Pass of Elastication Skill Share: Okay, so once you've done that, it's time to do the second pass of elastication. Naturally, the elastic is trying to fold in in some areas anyways, and that's the way we wanted to go. We need to fold in the elastic edge like that. We now need to do a top stitch to hold it in place. So you can either use a three step ag or you can use a single iag stitch for this one. Let's put that under the machine. I'm starting off in the middle of the gusset again. Now, we want to stitch as close to this outer edge of the elastic as possible. You can actually stitch this on the inside if you prefer to have a guideline, you want your furthest stitch to go just on the edge of that so part of the elastic there. The only thing with stitching on the back, so you have this side up on the machine is that you don't know where it's stitching on the front, so you don't really know how it looks from a front perspective. So that's the downside of that way. But for this one, we're going to stitch on the front so we can see where we're stitching it. We need to try and imagine the elastic say is finishing here. We don't want it to go any further than six mill in off the edge. I'm going to make my zigzag stitch a tiny bit wider so I'm going to make it 3.5 instead of three for this one. And then I'm going to keep it to a 2.5 length. This one is more simpler than the other one because you've got the elastic all in place, ready to go. You don't need to stretch it or anything. Try and hold the fabric away from the elastic as much as possible, it's all flat and there's no bump, you're just guiding it through on this path of elastication. Then when you get to the seams, go really slowly because it can be a little bit tricky. There's a little tip actually that I will show you when we do the bar tack about how to get through the bulk easily. What I tend to do is to look at my foot and I see where the fabric edge needs to feed through. Here, for my stitch to be in the right place, I'm lining up with the inner part of this foot bit here. And then when you get round to the full circle, just cut your threads. And have a look at your lovely work that you've just done. Oh, it doesn't look so pretty. I love that elastic. Yes, that's really lovely. I do love that. Right, Anyway. Okay, so that's the second part of elastication done. And you can see that really makes the Nicor. So basically, you need to repeat the process that we've done on this leg hole, on the other leg hole, and the waist as well. Now, when you pull the elastic out on the waist, you just want the tension equal on both sides on the front and the back needs to be equal. So they're finishing off a bit of the elastic here. You elastic might not have a decorative edge and that's fine, and you don't need to do anything more. But what I like to do is where the elastic crosses over here is just put in a little bit of a zigzag either side. Then that keeps that all flat. We'll do a little zigzag. For this one, I'm going to use a three width and a 1.4 length for this little zigzag. You might want to take a thread to the back for this one because this can pull under otherwise. And then just stop when you get to the edge of the fabric. Go back a few and then forward. So there we go. Just a little zigzag there. And then actually, I might not even need to do another one. I might just cut that one down. So yeah, I'm just going to cut the other side down a little bit, so that doesn't flap around. There we go. Then that's nice and secure now. Now, here's a little tip that I've got for you. Sometimes after you've done the elastic, the seams can be wavy. This does happen a lot. If the seam is wavy, there's a few reasons why it could be. It could be that you've not put enough tension on your elastic. That's the first thing that you need to look at. If you think you've put enough tension on the elastic, it could be that the elastic is actually too firm and it's causing a bit of mismatch with the fabric. Now, this can happen with more firm elastics. What you would then do with your top stitching, because you know how I said to you, you could do it either side with the top stitching, make sure you top stitch on the elastic side rather than the fabric side because then you'll find it won't stretch it out. Now I don't think you'll have that problem with the Nierelastic, but if you do, or if you have it with any other elastic, if you have that problem with any other elastic, then that's what to do. You have the elastic facing upwards because that's the most stablest side. Then that will stop the fabric waving. Now I'm just going to repeat the process I've done. I'm going to do the elastic on the other leg hole and then I'm going to do it on the waist. So I've done the other leg hole and I just wanted to stop whilst I was doing the waist to show you. I have put the ends of the elastic on the side seam on the back. I've put it about 1 centimeter in from the side seam towards the back. Then when I stretch out the elastic, Again, I've not got any marks on. I want the fabric and the elastic to be equal both sides. Can you see how pretty much the fabric and elastic is equal both sides. As in one part of the fabric isn't all the way down here and one is up here. It's just that they're both. They're both really equal and that's what you want when you're doing the waist edge. Then that's where you put the pin in and then do the quarter like we've done with the leg hole. So with the waist edge, I've pinned this elastic in place, but I just wanted to show you this because I have actually put a few more pins in than I would usually. I've got my half and I've got my quarter, and then I've half that again. Now the reason why I've done that is because the fabric is curling so much and that is just another thing to add in to make it a little bit trickier. When you sew, you need to make sure that the fabric is completely uncurled and it's easier to do that if you've got more pins in place. That's why I've added more pins. If you have a curly fabric like me, then I advised to put more pins in, so it's easier to sew. So yes, I'm going to take this to the machine. Now, I'm going to do the same that we did before. I'm going to do the first pass of elastication, and then the second pass of elastication. After you've done the three elastic lengths, then your kickers are pretty much finished. We just need to cut our threads off. So Because we've gen elastics on the round inside, we don't have any bulky seams or anything, as you can see, got the seam allowance here, and then these all nice and flat. You just snip threads off. It's the last step to do. My threads have all been snipped and now we have a lovely pair of knickers. The last thing I want you to do is just analyze what you've done. What part did you find tricky? What part did you find quite easy? Is there anything you can improve on for next time? If so, how would you do that? So as something to aim for, ideally you want your knickers sitting pretty much flat on the table. You don't want loser gather. You don't want wavy seams. You pretty much want it looking all nice and flat. That is what you're aiming for. If you've got too much gather in one area, possibly the back, then maybe think how next time you can just reduce that a little bit, or if you've got wavy seams, maybe next time you then need to apply more attention to the elastic. So if you just make a note of this and then when you come to doing them another time, you can get them even better than your first. 13. Tip How to attach different widths of elastic SS: So what do you do if your elastic so part of your elastic is wider than six mill or the seam allowance that's on your pattern? One option is to change the seam allowances of your paper pattern before you cut out your fabric. But that can be time consuming and also if you want to use a variety of different elastics on different occasions, then you're going to have to do that every time. We can actually sew the elastic there is a different width to the seam allowance, but it just takes a bit more care. So as you would go just on your elastic. You've got your right sides together and you've got your decorative edge facing into the garment. Place your elastic alongside the edge. But of course, if we sew here our first pass of elastication, we're going to have an eight mil semenans because this elastic here has a width of eight mil. There's two ways we can do it. We can either shift the elastic over a little bit. We need to obviously know what's going on underneath and that can be the tricky part. You do have to do a bit of blind sewing. But the more you do this, the more used to it you'll get. If you want, you can measure where the six mill is, you know where the edge of your elastic has to come to this side. I just needs to come a little bit more out. Then if you want, you can pin that down or you can just hold it there and then take it to the sewing machine. Use your zigzag stitch. And then once it's under, you can lift this side up and adjust it if necessary. Then basically, you just have to keep lifting it up a little bit to check. Now, the more you do this, the easier it will become. It does take a little bit of practice. So I I lift it up again, I remember you have to create tension on it as well, so stretching it while you go. We'll stop there. So that's what it will look like. I could have taken a bit more fabric in on that, but it is tricky, so you're doing it blind. But it's not the end of the world. It's two mill. At the end of the day, it's two mill. And then you would fold it back like you would usually, and then stitch it on the other side. At least you don't have to worry about cutting off all the edges on this one. So that's one way of doing it, and then the other way of doing it is doing it the other side. So I just cut this bit of alas stick here. So there we go. Again, you are going to have to be working blind. But you'll be able to see where you're stitching on the fabric side this time. Place your elastic like we've done before, right sides together, decorative edge facing in. But this time, turn it over, we're going to be stitching on the fabric side. This side is easier to see the two mill. Here, for instance, you can see that that would be to mill. If you put my presser foot over that. But the only problem is I can't now see where the elastic ends on the inner side. That's the part I'm going to have to be doing blind if I use this technique. Some people prefer to sew the fabric side and some people prefer to sew on the elastic side. It's how you feel most comfortable, really. That's how I would go at this. But you can feel it underneath. You can feel it with your finger. The more you do this, the more practice you'll get and you'll get the feel of it. M I think actually that side was better for me. Let's have a look on the other side. Yeah, I've sewn that perfectly. This is the bit you're sewing blind on this side. But I've actually sewn that perfectly. That's a relief for the camera. I'm happy with that. Again, then you would just flip it in and then you would do your second part of elastication on either side. So there's two different methods there that you can play around with, have a practice. And I do advise having a practice with this because it is a FAF if you're having to change your paper pattern all the time. It's not ideal. So yeah, the more practice you can get with sewing different widths of elastic on for seam allowances that are different to the elastic, then the more better you're going to become at it. So we go. If you had an elastic that is ten mil and you've got a seamounts at six mil, then you need to have four mil of elastic coming over the edge of the fabric here. I'm aiming for two mil to be seen on the edge of the fabric here because my elastic is eight mill and my seam ounce is six mil. Then same if you're using a 12 mil elastic, then you need to have six mil elastic in view if you're doing it on this side. Yeah, just a handy little technique there.