More for your Drawers
FROM THE 1920s-The New-Way Course in Fashionable Clothes-Making Bloomers and Drawers
"Sateen is an excellent material for bloomers. Batiste and cotton crepe are used a great deal, too. For drawers, muslin and nainsook are the most favored materials. But whatever material you use, you will have no trouble making well-fitting, attractive drawers and bloomer if you follow the ensuing step-by-step directions.
First, though, it is necessary that you obtain your body measures and compare them with the measurements of the pattern, altering the pattern to suit your particular requirements. This alteration differs in no way from the altering of the skirt pattern.
For making bloomers place the material and pattern together, following the construction guide. Make all construction marks and seam allowances.
The pattern indicates the place for reinforcement. Put in the reinforcements at this place, following the lines indicated.
French seam the inside of the legs. Be sure the legs are made in pairs and not both for one side.
Having completed these seams, you are now ready to match the seams in the crotch. Match also the construction marks and these seams, from the waistline in the back to the waistline in the front, and join, using a French seam. Finish the lower part of the legs with a ruffle and a casing for elastic, or simply with the casing.
Bias casing should be used if the bloomers are ruffle-finished. The bias facing should be used to finish the ruffle. If there is no ruffle, just a hem may be used for the casing, or one may use a bias facing.
A bias facing should also be added around the top, being wide enough to admit at least one-half inch of elastic.
If a placket is desired, it should be put in before the top is finished either at the side or at the back, and the casing made continuous from the placket edges. To fasten, place buttons and buttonholes on the ends of the casing.
Drawers
The making of drawers and bloomers is very much alike, but the routine of the work will be given for both, making sure that you will have no trouble with either.
Prepare the material and pattern in exactly the way taught for other undergarments.
Place the pattern on the material in the most economical way, that is, so the least possible amount of cloth is wasted.
Mark all construction marks.
For closed drawers there will be plackets to finish on each hip. These should be bound or continuous plackets.
After making the plackets join the seams on the inside of the legs using a French seam. (Be sure the legs are made in pairs.)
After these are seamed up, finish the bottom of the legs in any way desired. This may be a hem and lace, or it may be lace and insertion; in fact any finish that will give a smooth flat appearance, for today, with the vogue for narrow skirts the underwear must be very flat. One has the choice of a straight line at the knee of a scalloped line or slashes at the side, and the corners may be left square or rounded.
Match the construction marks at the front and back and the seams at the crotch and French seam the legs together.
The top of both front and back sections are to be put on belts which are really sewed on extension facings. The belt should not be too snug. The front section of the belt is somewhat longer than the back section, this is made longer so that the front of the garment will be smooth and flat and also to allow the front placket to extend beneath the placket at the back. The ends of the belt should lap just the width of the placket at each side, and a button and buttonhole finishes the end of each belt, the buttonholes to be worked on the back belt.
If the drawers are the open type the bias edges from the center front to the center back of each leg will be faced with a sewed on bias facing. At the front these edges will be lapped just their width and stitched together for about six inches below the belt. The top will then be put in a belt which is really a sewed on extension facing, the opening being at the back where the belt will lap enough to insure the tight closing of the drawers at the back, or the belt may be opened at the center of the front, the drawers lapped the necessary amount at the back and the front lapped and closed at the front using small buttons and buttonholes to fasten."
