DIY Culottés

Happy Saturday, my darlings!

How excited I am to bring you this DIY! I've found my way back behind my sewing machine and I didn't think it could fill me with so much joy. I don't need much after all! I'd like to take this opportunity to ask you if you know of a screen-printing workshop in Paris where I could screen-print fabric panels? You never know, I'm really struggling to find one in Paris.

Back to our subject, while I was working on this DIY, I was thinking about what we could embroider on the front of the knickers, I wanted to embroider strawberries, raspberries, cherries, some red, there was a little snow white aspect with the layette blue of the poplin chosen with Charlotte... And then, as I was tidying up our office (Bree Van de Kamp would be proud of the lemonade studio, it's so well organized), I found some gold mini-homard iron-on patches I'd bought in New York last September. General hysteria in the office: we're going to embroider lobsters on panties. It was so absurd and offbeat that the idea was unanimously approved, even by our male flatmates.

I'll spare you the messy search for titles for this article, you narrowly escaped "J'en pince pour toi Omar" among others... I hope this blue and gold weekly planner (so much for the red fruit patches, I preferred to paint my nails this color).

  You can find the english version here.

Cost: About 30 euros for the whole package.

Duration: 1 hour per panty on average.

Difficulty: Medium, but don't worry, you'll become the queen of panties!

For this DIY you'll need :

  • - The panty pattern you'll find here, here and here (S,M, L)
  • - Fabric (cotton poplin here, but you can also use tulle, for example)
  • - Gold thread
  • - A sewing machine
  • - Satin ribbon (approx. 10m)
  • - 7 lobsters or other embroidery patches (plenty available) here)
  • - Tracing paper
  • - Embroidery drum
  • - Scissors
  • - 10m elastic (for 150cm panties)

and for the box :

After downloading and printing your patterns, cut out your pieces, pinning the crotch piece to the front, then to the back. Stitch 0.5cm from the edge. Then take your second crotch piece and overlap it with your previous seam, pin, then assemble as close as possible to the previous seam, you can even overlap the seams.

Press the crotch well to check that the pieces are aligned, then on the front part of the panty, fold the top part slightly so that it's the same size as the first.

Using your iron, mark this fold at the crotch/front junction, pin and sew this part, trying to sew as close to the edge as possible to overlap the seams and get a clean result.

Set your machine to the zigzag stitch, or your buttonhole stitch with a stitch width of 1 (the smallest), and do this zigzag stitch all around the edges of your panties to get a clean finish, like a kind of cleanliness embroidery.

Use small scissors to cut away any unsightly threads. You can then download here the day file (English or French, your choice). Print it out, then transfer the day of your choice.

Then offset it to the center of your panties (here 2cm from the top of the panties). Use your embroidery drum to tighten the fabric, then start embroidering.

We tried chain stitch, but it was too coarse for the typography, so make dotted lines a few millimeters wide with the stitches of your embroidery. Then take your lobster or other patch, heat-seal it and embroider it, so you don't lose your crustacean in the machine wash!

Take your elastic (29cm for the front waistband, 29cm for the back waistband and 45cm for the crotch sections) and start sewing the elastic with a zigzag stitch (stitch width 4 ). Pull the elastic so that it joins the two ends of the panty. You're going to tell me that the length of the elastic is shorter than the length of the fabric - that's normal. It's up to you to pull (gently) on the elastic to make it as long as the part you're applying it to. It's important to use the right amount of tension, and to pull evenly to create uniform gathers - you'll be fine!

You can already admire the little pleats that form thanks to the elastic, and continue with the crotches.

Cut 4 x 30cm ribbons (beveled is prettier), pin them to the panty ends and sew them 0.5cm from the panty edges. My ribbon comes from Shindo (2 rue d'Aboukir 75002 Paris) and what's more, if you come from me, you get 20% off!

Make pretty bows, and TA-DA!

Now for the box!

Once you've printed out your patterns, take your ruler and blunt scalpel and lightly trace your lines, which will make folding easier. Go on: 1,2,3 Fold, follow the dotted lines on your pattern!

Then fold each side back on itself several times, sliding the small outer strips or corners underneath. Repeat with the second, slightly larger part of the box...

Then fold your pretty panties: both sides inwards.

 And one last fold! (Yes, we thought you might not know how to fold panties...)

Now all you have to do is slip them into the box and TA-DA!

And there's a little gif to finish it off! And as you're the nicest readers I've ever had, I'd like to thank you by letting you win this planner... To do so, leave me a comment telling me why you should win this planner, and not someone else (also tell me your size from XS to XL, and the planner will be remade for the winner)! And I'll draw lots for the winner next Saturday. Until then, the Saturday lobster and I wish you a great weekend!

Faced with your incredible and multiple reasons to win, we had no choice but to draw lots:

The winner is Marie, who made bathing suits for her whole family! Please send your address to [email protected] ! A thousand kisses to you all!

May 31, 2014
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