The Sewing Equivalent of Voldemort?

Could it be? Did I actually make more cake? Actually, if underwear is cake, this is about as frosting-y as cake can be.

So, if Voldemort is He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, and underwear is euphemised as Unmentionables, well, then it logically follows that I just sewed up a pair of Dark Lords. Um. Right.

You know how I ended my last post by jesting that underwear was next? Well, I couldn't stop thinking about it. As in I went to sleep mentally assessing the state of my unmentionables drawer, and how I needed more seamless panties, and honestly, it couldn't be that difficult, right? I woke up deciding that if there was a free pattern somewhere, and it didn't take up too much fabric (I mean, how could it?) or printer paper, I would give it a whirl. Enter the Lace Tanga Panties over at Burdastyle, and three pages of printer paper and an hour later, I had this pale, noseless, Tom Riddle of my own.

I'm not about to model lacy panties for teh interwebs, so this heart pillow from IKEA will have to be my stand in. It's kind of remarkable, actually, what a good job it does...

Its butt is not as shapely as mine, though, so perhaps heart pillows won't be replacing humans as underwear models anytime soon. Also, the center seams look slightly crooked in these pictures, but that's just because I am really bad at dressing pillows. I promise it's straight in real life.

The pattern was remarkably easy to put together, with only a few seams and minimal fitting issues. The instruction sheet I downloaded from Burdastyle is supremely unhelpful (it also says 2 yards of lace required; I used less than a yard), saying only to follow the video, so I had to go search for that just to find out what the seam allowances are. In case you are ever seized with the urge to make your own, I'll save you the trouble and let you know that the seam allowance is 1/4". But if you want to watch the video, here it is (the best part is the end, where the older lady doing the demo says in a fakely excited voice, "It's so fast, so easy, and ooh! So sexy!" Please go watch just the last ten seconds and tell me I'm not the only one who was giggling insanely). Anyway, the resulting panties are mostly equivalent to the $12 seamless lace panties you can find at Victoria's Secret and such. My only beef with my pair is that it fits more like boy shorts in front, because you have to use the straight edge of the lace instead of being able to scoop it out to fit the curve of the hip joint. If you like boy short style underwear, that's fine, but it's not my favorite.

ZOMG my center seams all match!! You can also tell where I zigzagged the lining in.

Inside out. The video didn't say anything about how to finish the seams, so I just pressed the center seams open and stitched down the allowance on either side. For the other seams, I just pinked, pressed to one side, and stitched down the seam allowance.

Summary:
Fabric: a little less than 1 yard of 6.5" wide cream-colored stretch lace from the Vintage Fashion Expo...I'd originally gotten it for lace insertion, but then I realized that it's way too wide and stretchy to boot. Also, a tiny scrap of what may be the most unstable, incapable-of-recovering jersey I've ever worked with for the lining fabric.
Notions: none...although I'm toying with the idea of adding a tiny ribbon bow on front. That might be too much cutesy for me, though. I mean, isn't it frosting enough that these are lace?
Hours: 1!
Will you make this again? This is a pretty good underwear pattern even for not-stretch-lace, so I think I will, but I'll scoop out the front section to accommodate my bulging quads, first.
Total cost: $2...That's a savings of $10!
Final thoughts: I'm actually pretty excited about this. I never thought that sewing the cakiest of cakes, the basic panty, would be so thrilling, but it is. Probably because it's lacy. I remember being in high school and walking into VS for the first time and coveting all the lacy-but-out-of-my-price-range unmentionables, and now I can make my own! I'm even thinking I want to try a Ruby Slip... Now I just need to find a good source of wide stretch lace, and I'll be all set to churn these out (if this pair is the equivalent of Voldemort, does making multiple pairs mean I'm making...*gasp* Horcruxes??? I think this is where the metaphor really breaks down. Although I guess that you could argue that it was already broken, considering that underwear is not evil, nor bent on enslaving the world, at least to my knowledge...).

Tiny Voldie head from here, pasted in and captioned courtesy of PicMonkey.