Thread Theory Comox Trunks

I know it has been a long time between posts! But I have been busy sewing, so there will be more projects to come soon!

Continuing with the menswear theme going on in my blog, I have made some men’s underwear! I used Thread Theory’s Comox Trunks pattern. Thread Theory are a Canadian based menswear sewing pattern company and I bought a few of their PDF patterns during their February sale.

The trunks were really easy to construct! Especially with Thread Theory’s helpful instructions including types of stitches to use. I hadn’t used the reinforced stretch stitch before which they suggest in their instructions. Depending on the pattern size you use and the width of the fabric you have, with strategic pattern cutting, you can get 2 trunks out of 1 meter of fabric. I made a few pairs for my boyfriend and my brother who were sizes 32 and 28 respectively. It’s also a good stash buster for your stretch fabric remnants. The blue and white stripy fabric might be familiar to some of you…
As well as using up remnants, I bought some knit fabric in plain red and with a bicycle print as my boyfriend is a cyclist.

For my brother after making the first pair for him, I altered the gusset by adding 2cm to the width as he said it felt tight when sitting. That could also be partly due to the fabric as I know the blue and white jersey fabric doesn’t have the most stretch. I also tried an alternative front design without the fly front exit. On Thread Theory’s blog they have some ideas and suggestions on how to customise your Comox Trunks pattern and even have a modification for women!

Alternative crotch design without fly front.

In the original pattern, the elastic waistband is sewn on top with right side of the fabric touching the wrong side of the elastic, leaving the raw edge of the fabric on the inside. For some of the trunks I made, I tried an alternative method I saw on someone else’s blog which hid the raw edge. They first sewed the waistband elastic right sides together aligning the elastic ‘bottom edge’ with the waist hem and the elastic ‘top edge’ facing down. Next, they folded the sewn waistband edge inwards with the elastic ‘top edge’ now facing up, and did a zig-zag top stitch so that the raw edges of the hemline were hidden. I found this method did hide the raw edges well, however, was quite bulky to sew the top stitching particularly at the fly front binding where there were several layers of fabric.

No raw edges on the inside using the different finishing method.

I made 6 pairs in total! Here are some individual pics of one pair from the front and back: