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#AllButtsWelcome: gender affirming underpants

May 19, 2021 2 Comments

I love the range of conversations we can have about butts — from underwear and trousers to skirts and swimsuits, there’s a world of buttly goodness to explore!

We got a query through email a while ago: the parent of a trans man wanted to see if we could help with finding menswear-styled underwear patterns that weren’t shaped for a bulge. One of the best things about sewing is that we get to control both form and function, and in this case, form is really important for making sure someone can feel genuinely themselves, so we wanted to help as much as we could.

As part of #AllButtsWelcome month we thought we would share the advice we gave, in case anyone else is looking for a similar underpant style!

We contacted a few friends who we thought might be able to help and did a bit of research. We came up a number of great suggestions:

There are a couple of “women’s patterns” which actually fit the bill quite well! Sophie Hines has the Arcsin undies pattern which is a hipster brief with an overlapping faux fly front. There is also is a pattern by Stitchuponatime which is a women’s boxerwear boxer briefs pattern.

Sophie Hines Arcsin Undies and Stitch Upon a Time Women’s Boxerwear briefs

Glitter Grandpa suggested joining Facebook groups lgbtq+, ally sewists and sew queer nation for great sources of advice.

SewQueer put a few questions out on IG, including this one:  https://www.instagram.com/p/CKFeEO0leqc/.  We saw saw rad patterns, patterns for pirates underwear and made for mermaids gable boxers and freesewing.org mentioned as patterns/sources which have options for bulge or no bulge.

Emery Smith really came up with the goods — they shared the modified pieces of the Thread Theory Comox Trunks that they use:

An image showing a printed pattern instruction sheet, plus two modified cut out pattern pieces.

Emery told us that they adjusted pattern piece 3 as shown by the dashed line marked on the piece, to take off the curve. Then they indicated from their notes that you don’t use piece 2 or piece 6, but cut four pieces of the modified piece 3. The other piece shown on the right is their own version with no centre seam, so you only need to cut two pieces for the front instead.

This sort of advice is the reason we love the sewing world. A person who wanted to make something for their child and support them in pursuit of their identity was able to ask for help and a whole bunch of people in the sewing community gave a bit of time and used their contacts and resources to respond.

Hopefully this might help others looking for something similar, but regardless: GO TEAM!

Chloe is a Sewcialists Editor who lives and sews in Australia, on the land of the Gadigal people of the Eora nation. She blogs at chlo-thing.com and can be found on Instagram here. 

CategoriesAll Butts Welcome