I Hate Batch Sewing

April 29, 2026

I didn’t set out to sew my own underwear. I sew a lot of my clothes but I wanted to draw the line somewhere. I thought that line was before underwear but it turns out that it’s after. And if the line is after underwear, I’m not sure what’s left.

A while ago now, my underwear drawer hit that spot. You know the one. I’m sure we’ve all been there. You open up your underwear drawer and every single pair has reached the end of its life at the exact same time.

I contemplated sewing my own but I have a long list of things that I would much rather sew than underwear so why not just go out and buy some. It turns out that buying underwear is a lot harder than it sounds. The problems I encountered included, but are not limited to, horrible, horrible fabric, waist cinching elastic, underwear that fall down to the point that my pants were the only thing holding them up, saggy leg holes, leg holes cut too high and way too tight. There were even problems that I never considered like underwear that were glued, yes glued, together and started to fall apart. Ugh! The thought of spending more money on something that I could just do myself, and make exactly how I wanted, made batch sewing more appealing by the second.

Even though I came to that decision, this isn’t a story of how I then spent a couple of hours sewing all of my underwear, happy day, the end. No. Batch sewing is a chore and I hate it. It has taken me over six months to complete nine pairs of underwear. It’s been six months of internal pep talks encouraging me to just get over it and sew them already.

Luckily I didn’t have to order any fabric. That would have been another hurdle that would have set me back. I just used scraps leftover from making t-shirts. Some scraps were big enough to get a full front piece and a full back piece but some pairs of underwear are made from as many as five pieces. They are such a great scrap buster.

After I cut them all out, they lingered for a bit because I didn’t have elastic. Ordering elastic is a simple task. It takes about five minutes but rather than sit down and order the elastic, I just kept adding “order elastic” to my to-do list on repeat. Then I had the revelation that I could sew everything together up until the point of adding the elastic. I did that so long ago that I completely forgot that I had already done it. In January, I still hadn’t ordered elastic but I did have the brilliant idea of sewing all of the pieces together up until the point of adding elastic. That’s when the pep talks changed their tone. Just order the damn elastic and finish the project already! Why I let the smallest things hijack simple projects until they become big projects I’ll never know. About six weeks ago I ordered the elastic and it showed up within the week. But here we are, six weeks later and I’m just getting to it now.

I can’t say that I enjoyed this project but I can say that getting dressed in the morning is a much more pleasant experience.