Welcome to Waddersville + Y-Front Briefs: YEA or NAY?

Readers, I am fortunate that most of the clothes I sew turn out to be wearable garments.   Most.

Today I thought I'd experiment making Y-front briefs -- something I've never tried before.  I had all that knit fabric left over and McCalls 3438, my favorite vintage underwear pattern, which includes Y-fronts (view B, lower left hand corner).



Even though the color is vaguely orthopedic, I decided to use the solid stretch knit left over from Michael's rayon tee shirt project.  It has a lot more lycra in it than underwear I generally wear, but it was there and I was game.



But wait -- before I get into this project, could somebody please explain to me what the point of Y-fronts is?  I mean, I know what that little opening is meant for, but I have NEVER heard of anybody using it that way.  (Men don't talk about underwear much with each other.)  It's so much easier to just pull down your waistband and do what you have to do.  Or am I doing it wrong?

Seriously, guys, do you ever pull anything through that little Y-front opening?



The McCall's 3438 Y-front pattern is pretty accurate, even though it calls for a waistband casing rather than having you attach the exposed elastic (like the Jalie pattern I made recently).

I got off to a pretty good start.







But then I screwed up something that should have been a no-brainer -- the leg binding and binding elastic.  I should have just followed the Jalie instructions; they were much easier.  I tried using some sort of stretch blind hem stitch and it looked terrible.



 I could have left it as-is, but no: I insisted on trying to rip out all the tiny stitches in the binding.  Big mistake.



This underwear would have been ugly in the best of circumstances and with all that lycra, too hot to wear anytime soon.  Still, I hate to make wadders.  I spent too long trying to make something I wasn't really that excited about in the first place -- rarely a good idea.

In closing, is Y-front style underwear the proverbial solution in search of a problem?

If you don't wear men's underwear yourself, please ask somebody you know who does.  Tell them it's to answer the question --

Y-front briefs: YEA or NAY?

Have a great day, everybody!