How To Make Couples Matching Underwear

In the spirit of the upcoming Valentine’s Day holiday, I want to make a matching underwear set for me and my husband. And as this custom-made underwear-making experiment turned out great last night-I’m sure I’ll be making more soon.

Two Different Styles

In this blog post, we’re going to sew two different underwear styles, one in a more traditional men’s fashion and one in a more traditional women’s fashion. I have finished the hems on the legs of each style with different techniques.

I have a chronic pain condition and I find that when I wear clothes a lot of things that rub in the wrong way hurt or irritate me. Come learn more about chronic pain in this post, The Beginners Guide To Fibromyalgia.

Today we’re creating one of the two underwears in a chronic pain-friendly way. While the other we will create in a more normal fit as that’s the style my husband prefers as he doesn’t have the same seam issue I have.

For both underwear styles, we will sew a French seam, because I don’t like seams so I wanted to make it as smooth and “seamless” as possible on the inside.

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Approximate time to completion: 3 Hrs

Days spent working on it: 2

Disclaimer: I am trying to teach myself the Metric System, so I will always try to include both measurements in my tutorials, i.e. centimeters and inches, meters and yards. Though in my everyday sewing life lately I have been using them rather interchangeably, I apologize if I miss including both or switch between the two too often.

Making the Patterns

To make the pattern for any style of underwear, take a pair of underwear that you already like the style and fit of. For an even easier method, you could grab an old pair of underwear that fits but is falling apart or has period stains and is pretty much trash at this point. Something that you don’t mind cutting completely apart.

If you’re using old underwear, grab it and cut it apart along all of the seams so you can trace it and create a pattern based off of each individual piece.

If you don’t want to cut apart your underwear, grab your favorite pair and lay it flat on a piece of paper. You can follow the pattern-making techniques in this blog post How To Make A Sewing Pattern For Shorts to learn how to fold your clothing items on the seams and trace each piece to build your pattern.

There’s no reason to trace the waistband and pattern it, as we will be attaching an underwear waistband.

Extra Specifications

If your underwear is a little too small and you want a looser fit you can make your pattern bigger by adding 1″ (2cm) around all sides of your pattern.

If your underwear already fits the way you want it to, just add .50″ (1cm) around all sides of your pattern.

In addition, because of the side seams we will be sewing in this tutorial you will need to include extra side seam allowance when cutting and/or crafting your pattern. That is, add an extra .50″ (1cm) in addition to your seam allowance from the previous paragraphs only to the side seams.

Depending on how you plan to finish the leg hem of your underwear, you may need to add an extra seam allowance of 1.25” (3cm). I added this to the underwear pattern for my husband but left it off of mine.

I usually add 1″ (2cm) to the waistline as well. All of this can be explored in greater detail by following my pattern-making process in this post, How To Make A Sewing Pattern For Shorts.

Sewing Bikini or Boybrief Styles

The Gusset

Start by taking your gusset flap and pinning it good sides facing, gusset to the front underwear piece. Take the other gusset flap and pin it good side facing inward on the backside of the front underwear piece. You should have an underwear sandwich: gusset, front underwear piece, gusset.

Sew this together with a Zig Zag or overlock it.

Lay your newly sewn piece out flat, with the good side of the front underwear piece and the gusset facing up. The other gusset piece cannot be seen in my photo above as it is directly underneath the front underwear piece.

Take your back underwear piece and lay it good side facing down. Pin this in place to the gusset right along the crotch.

Roll everything to the inside of the underwear revealing the other gusset flap.

Pin the back gusset to the front gusset, good sides facing. Sew your underwear burrito together along this line using a zig-zag stitch or an overlocker.

Pull everything through one of the holes and flip everything right side out. There shouldn’t be any exposed seams in the crotch, only the raw edges along the leg hole.

The Side Seams

Pin the side seams together wrong sides of the fabric facing. Sew along this line with a zig-zag stitch.

Cut off any excess fabric as close to the stitch as you can get without cutting through it. I forgot to do this and it poked out later. You can see it on the finished project, unfortunately.

Flip your fabric right side out and fold the seam you just trimmed to the inside. Pin and sew a straight stitch along this line on both sides.

Congratulations you created a French seam!

Trim off any uneven edges, like you see in my photo above along the waistband. Make sure you trim the leg holes as well so they have a super clean finished edge as we will be leaving the edge raw.

Sewing Boxerbrief Style

The Crotch

Fold the crotch pieces in half, good sides facing, and pin them in place. Zig-zag stitch or overlock the open area at the bottom.

Take your two front pieces and one of the crotch pieces and pin everything together, good sides facing. Zig-zag stitch or overlock along the pinned areas.

Lay the piece you just sewed flat, good side facing up.

fold the two leg pieces into the center to expose the side seams on the crotch.

Take your second crotch piece and place it on top of the rolled-up fabric, good side facing down. Pin everything together along the crotch seam. Sew this together with a zig-zag stitch or overlocker.

Pull the rest of the underwear out of the burrito roll. You shouldn’t see any exposed hems on the inside of the crotch.

The Side Seams

Pin the side seams together wrong sides of the fabric facing. Sew along this line with a zig-zag stitch.

Cut off any excess fabric as close to the stitch as you can get without cutting through it.

Flip your fabric right side out and fold the seam you just trimmed to the inside. Pin and sew a straight stitch along this line on both sides.

Pin the crotch together, good sides facing, and sew a zig-zag stitch or overlocking stitch. Trim off any excess fabric after sewing the crotch area to ensure it is as comfy as possible.

Trim your boxer legs if needed to ensure they are even.

At this time trim up anything else if there are any uneven fabric spots.

Create a rolled hem along each of the leg holes and sew this together with a straight stitch.

Sewing the Waistband

If you have an overlocking machine, overlock the top edge of your underwear which you will be attaching the waistband to. If you’re like me and you only have a zig-zag stitch on a regular sewing machine, I don’t really recommend this step.

You can see in the pictures below where I was attaching my waistband to my underwear that I did this step with my zig-zag setting and it resulted in an ugly, curled hem that honestly was quite difficult to even sew. Granted, you cannot see it in the end result, but the process did get me frustrated.

With that, you decide whether or not to zig-zag stitch or overlock the raw edge on your underwear waistband hemline.

Measure your elastic waistband on yourself or the person you are making this for. Make sure it sits comfortably and you have a little overhang so you can sew the band together.

Pin the ends of your waistband together, good sides facing, and sew a straight stitch with .50” (1cm) overhang.

Pin down the two overhanging edges from your last stitch to the inside of the waistband and sew with a straight stitch.

Find and mark the four “corners” of your waistband and underwear, the front, back, left, and right sides.

Line up the four points on your waistband with the four points on your underwear. Pin this in place with .50” (1cm) overhang to the inside of the waistband. Work your way around the underwear pinning the waistband in place as you go. Be sure to stretch it to get everything to lay flat where needed.

If you have a twin needle you can sew this all at once on the outside of the waistband. If you don’t have one sew the top edge of the underwear with a straight stitch from the inside. Stretch the waistband as you go to ensure everything lies flat.

Afterward, flip the underwear right side out and top stitch along the bottom edge of the waistband. I had a little difficulty keeping my lines straight while sewing these, you can see this if you look really closely at my picture. If you use a matching thread you shouldn’t notice it from the outside.

Because the fabric and waistband in this area is meant to stretch, you will need to put one last stitch in this area, a zig-zag stitch. Unfortunately, the two straight stitches will likely burst when you put the underwear on.

A twin needle produces a type of zig-zag stitch on the back, which is more secure and needed for this stretchy fabric. But since we’re sewing this without one, we’ll have to recreate this by including a final zig-zag stitch to finish everything off.

The Results

The finished result gives you two comfy, custom-fit underwear made especially for you and your person. They’re ideal for everyday wear, morning cuddles, and secret dance parties.

My husband put them on as soon as I finished them last night and hasn’t changed out of them since. So I’d say that was a success. He says they’re comfy and the exact fit he likes.

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Let me know if you have any questions in the comments! What style interests you most, the chronic pain-friendly version or the regular version with the rolled hem?

If you make this project, tag and DM me on Instagram @doorsandfloorsblog so I can see what you make! Remember to use the hashtag #DoorsAndFloorsBlog

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