1940s knickers and mini bloomers

Pattern: Vera Venus French knickers pattern (free)

Fabric: about 0.6 m light pink rayon (?) each

Haberdasheries: A button and three snap fasteners each; 1.7 m lace for the knickers, 1 m elastic for the bloomers

When I made my first 1940s clothes, I also made two pairs of knickers, because the event I was attending was two days long. But the D-Day trip was going to have us walking around in 1940s style for four days, so I needed two more pairs of knickers! I think it’s fun to wear authentic underwear below my historical clothes, even if no one sees it, but also, it’s often more handy. In the case of 1940s clothing, wearing knickers over a suspender belt is really much handier than wearing modern briefs underneath the suspender when going to the lavatory, because you can lower the knickers leaving the suspender neatly in place.

Because I’m not that fond of making exactly the same thing twice, I decided to use a new pattern: the Vera Venus French knickers pattern.

Printing the pattern did take a LOT of paper. Page 7 could easily have been skipped or left empty. I cut up the leftovers into grocery list papers.

After printing the pattern and sticking it together, I looked at my previous undie patterns and thought this one was almost the same as the Complete Course In Dressmaking one, but it isn’t – there’s a lot less fabric in this one.

Vera suggests “you may like to put elastic in the hem of the legs turn them into […] mini-bloomers”. Wait, did I hear mini bloomers? I thought that sounded fabulous, so I made one regular pair and one pair of mini bloomers, which I cut 4 cm longer than the pattern, because otherwise I thought them a bit short for bloomers. As I thought might be the case, the elastic in the bloomers needs to be pulled down regularly when wearing them.

The knickers are definitely my favourite 1930s-40s underpants so far. They fit perfectly and aren’t too airy, so it doesn’t feel like I haven’t got any knickers on. I also love this colour fabric!