It's Tutorial Tuesday! Wool underwear!

I am sure some of you are shaking your heads & saying "yep... Kris has finally lost it!", but I made wool underwear! I wanted these mostly for running, since you need your underwear to be made of a moisture wicking material, but they can be worn any time.

You'll want to use lightly felted merino wool for these... felted enough that the edges don't unravel when cut, but is still stretchy & drapey. For your pattern, use a pair of underwear that fit you well, but need to go (I won't be showing you the underwear that I used!)! Take your old pair of underwear & cut off the waist band, then down the center. These pieces will be your pattern.

Take your pattern and cut out 2 pieces, making sure to add 1/2" on each side, for seam allowance, and because your regular underwear material will most likey be slightly stretchier than the wool is. You should end up with 2 pieces that look like this:


Now sew the ends together, wrong sides out.


Now turn it, so the seams are down the center & sew the bottom pieces (the crotch) together.

Now to make the waist band, cut 2 piece of wool that are a little shorter than the underwear (you may want to measure your waist & take it down a couple of inches to account for the stretch). Your waistband will end up being less half the width of your pieces, so make sure they are wide enough. In hindsight, I could have used a little more waistband on mine, but they are fine as is too.

Sew the ends of your pieces together, wrong sides out.


Now you will take this & fold the width in half, seams in, right side out & sew this to the waist of your underwear. Your underwear should have seams out still, and you will be sewing the waist band to the inside of the underwear. Since the waistband is a little smaller, you will need to be stretching it as you go. When you are done, and flip them right side out, they should look like this:


Now flip them back wrong side out, and repeat the waist band process on the legs (only smaller, obviously). When you are done with that, they will look like they are done, but you have one more step, adding a panel to cover the crotch seams.

Just cut a small piece to the shape of the crotch, and sew it to the seams on either side.


Now you are done!

I took mine for a test run last night (went jogging in them). The only con to wearing these that I found, is that they are slightly more bulky at the seams than regular underwear, so where they are fine under jeans, I had definite panty lines under my tighter fitting jogging pants. I think i'll work up a pattern for a more "boy short" style, using the original seams, and that should eliminate than problem. The pros? There is no sweat smell on my wool underwear (or even on the synthetic jogging pants I wore over them), that is usually on my clothes after I run (I can't believe I am telling you all this!), there was no unpleasant dampness from sweat while I ran, I was the perfect temp (neither hot or cold) in that region while I ran, and they are really cute looking! Of course these can be worn for everyday underwear too. I would imagine these would be fantastic for any mom that has to sit in cold bleachers!

It's Tutorial Tuesday - recycled merino wool running pants

This one's for the joggers! First, star out with a really big merino sweater (I believe mine was a mens XL, and I wear a medium in workout pants, and a 10 in jeans), and lightly felt it, so that it's still stretchy, but won't unravel when you cut. Now, make the shorts in this tutorial, making the back end pieces slightly bigger than the front pieces if you are using compression shorts as your pattern, like I used for these pants (I didn't do this, wish I would have, but wasn't the end of the world), and making the leg part as long as your sweater will allow. Ok, you should have shorts now.



Now cut the arms off of your sweater, so the tops are straight across. These will be the bottom part of the legs.


Now take the legs and tuck them inside the bottom of the legs of the shorts, so when you look inside the "tube" you see no seam. Remember that your shorts should still be right sides out at this point.



Now sew 2 seams, 1/4 inch apart, all the way around.


Now you're done! This seam is on the outside, for comfort, and the second stitch around exaggerates the seam, so it ends up looking like shorts over pants, instead of just having a weird seam. I think that if you have a serger, you could serge the legs to the shorts, but since I don't have a serger, I don't know if that would work. If anyone serges the legs on, will you come back and let us know how that turned out?

Here I am in all my running gear. I went out running in this outfit the other day, when it was 40 degrees. Everywhere I had wool (my funky hat tied into a beanie, my runner's mittens, my pants), I was comfortable from start to finish. I had synthetics (my shirt & jacket), I ran hot and cold the whole time. That wasn't a surprise though, since wool is naturally insulating, breathable, and moisture wicking. The added bonus of using wool for running pants, is that you don't have wash them every time, like synthetics, because of their antibacterial properties. After I run, always before I shower, my clothes usually stink [I can't believe I just posted this on the internet], and they go straight into the hamper, but I turned my running pants inside out to air, and the next day they smelled fresh as a daisy!

Runner's mittens

Can you tell i'm on a mitten kick ;) ? Anyway, I took up jogging over the summer, so this is going to be my first winter as a runner, and i'll be learning as I go. Friday morning was the coldest weather i've jogged in, 40 degrees, and it felt great! When I started out though, my hands were very cold, but by the end were more than warm & sweaty. I wasn't wearing anything on them, and wondered when & what I should be wearing on my hands, so I started Googling. Apparently when it's that cold, I should be starting out with a thin pair of runner's gloves or mittens. They should be thin, breathable, and moisture wicking. Hmmmm... I know something that does all that... merino wool! It does everything those sports fabrics do, and more. I made myself a pair, and will be selling them at my upcoming craft fairs, for you local folks that are interested. As a bonus, they can worn inside other mittens, as a doubler, as well.