How to Make Boy Shorts - Threadbanger

This week Rob and Corinne take a tour of Parachute Studios and get a lesson from the creators of Ruffeo Hearts Lil Snotty on how to make a pair of boy shorts from an old tee shirt. * Ruffeo Hearts Lil Snotty: http://rhls.com/ * Cubist Literature: http://cubistliterature.com/ * Junk Prints: http://www.junkprints.com/

Rob: Hey what's up everyone? Welcome to ThreadBanger! Corinne: This week we are headed over to the Parachute Studios in Brooklyn to hang with the kids behind Ruffeo hearts Lil Snotty. Rob: Check it, check it, check it, check it out! Corinne: Brooklyn in the house! That's right! Maxwell: Hey! Welcome to the parachute! Hey what's up? We're Ruffeo hearts Lil Snotty and we're chilling here in Red Hook at Parachute. Parachute is a collective of a lot of different mediums of artists. Many artists, many different ideas come together. This is where Cubist Literature gets done. Craig Hunter: My name is Craig Hunter and I run Cubist Literature. Cubist Literature right now is all about silk-screened T-shirts, but it began as a music project and I do sewing, knitting, photography, everything. Maxwell: This is Ezra Pastiz (ph) zone. This is the fabulous Junk prints by Shania (ph)! Shania: Hey ya! Maxwell: right over here is where RHLS gets done. Male Speaker: This episode of ThreadBanger is brought to you by cotton's new online exclusive fashion show Inseam. Maxwell: We started out in Olympia, Washington. Sara and I met and she wanted to know what the R, my first name stands for, which none of you will ever find out. And she was guessing all these names and one of the names was Ruffeo and I was like, you are right! That's my name and she had lots of excess mucus from being in Houston, so I nick-named her Lil Snotty. We kind of like left each other anonymous love letters and messages on the answering machine because I was living with her ex-boyfriend. I was doing some Rap shows like I was mixing puppetry and speed rap and I took a costume making class because I wanted to make a unicorn costume for this love story between -- unicorn falls in love with a vacuum-cleaner and then gives birth to a sharp whack. It was the sweet scene. So I had to make a unicorn costume with an Orpheus to birth a vacuum-cleaner and that kind of sparked like my sewing. My teacher was like, wow! You can really sew a straight line, maybe this is your gift! And I was like, well, I am having a lot of fun and we started to make merchandise and that was selling better than my CDs and we're broke and hungry. So we joined the Olympia Clothing project and it just kind of took off real quick. Sara: For us up-cycling and getting fabrics from stores is never really a question whether we were going to do it that way or not. We started that way from the beginning. I think because that was what we had around, we couldn't afford to buy fabric. Maxwell: Taking apart these clothes sort of informed our aesthetic and like we've learned a lot about pattern making just from like seam-ripping a sleeve off. Everyday we get inspired, get motivated with a little dance. So we'd like to teach you guys as our first tutorial, how to do a motivational dance. Sara: The first step is going to YouTube.com and searching for a crazy feature. It's the first thing that comes up. [Music Playing] Maxwell: So it's actually not that complicated, it's just a little bit of this and then when the hook comes you go like this. I am working to do, stand. [Music Playing] Today we are going to teach you guys how to make some underwear. We do this every single day. We come in here, we do our motivational dance and then we are like, we haven't done lingerie in like two months, let's make another pair of underwear today. Sara: We usually start this process with Maxwell drawing out a design because I can't draw. So he does it. Maxwell: Your material is pretty much T-shirt, you can use the same sleeves on your shirt but I wanted to spruce it up with a little bit of color. So we just grab some extra T-shirt sleeves we have around. And some sort of elastic. I am just going to cut it open so that I can kind of center up a pattern over this area. These are for Rob so let's just bust out our measuring tape. I know how much this is, but I am not going to tell because maybe Rob is self-conscious. He is a pretty trimmed man though, really. You want your underwear to fit pretty tight because cotton has a way of stretching out. So take off about 3-4 inches. Take your measurement, once you've gone around your waist, you're just going to fold the measuring tape in half. Sometimes we like to use a little bit of chalk to mark out the pattern. So we make sure we don't do any sporadic cuts. So the only difference in underwear, the front has a little bit of an arc, the back is kind of just a straight line when you are doing your leg hole. You need a little bit of extension down here to wrap between the legs. And then on the front you do a little bit of an arc. To get the nicest symmetrical shape you're just going to fold your fabric in half, you can use your handy rotary knife or some fabric scissors. Just follow the white lines. Here you have your back; here you have your front. Rob: Kaboom! Maxwell: Kaboom! Kind of laid out the smaller side of the T-shirt seam on the inside. Take your scissors, cut down the middle or you can seam-rip. Go ahead and do the waist-band. Maybe mark it with a pen or a little piece of chalk or if you were like me just hold it with your fingers. Save the spot, elastic is nice and forgiving, and make your cut. Now we're ready to sew. I like to save myself a little bit of time by sewing up the sides first and then leaving the middle for last. The idea here to make your underwear roll real fast is that you've got -- basically you've made a loop, there is the back, there is the front and you've got like this open area. So I am going to lay my undies down like this, so you're just going to lay it down towards the middle. We have half a leg! Waistband time, waistband time! Taking the side that I think is going to feel better on the body. I am making it the inside. Then I am just going to stitch it back and forth right here. Take your undies, turn them right side out, it really doesn't matter where you put your waistband, but I always like to line up the seam because it looks pro. Just kind of stretch it out. See what we've got, inside. I am just going to straight stitch this. I don't think it's necessary to surge. So if this is your first time sewing waistband material, you are going to kind of need to just like check every once in a while, stretch it, so that it's all the same level. Okay, let's clip off the little threads and see what we've made. This is kind of my favorite part, putting my candles on the cake. Ladies and gentlemen! Free style rappers interpretational dancers you've just made your first pair of box-briefs, short shorts, cute-ass undies -- I don't know! diy or die! Boy-shorts. Rob: diy or die! Maxwell: diy or die! If you guys end up making your own undies, shoot us an email, I'd love to see them at ruffeoheartslilsnotty@gmail.com. Sara: Thanks for hanging out with Ruffeo hearts Lil Snotty today! Maxwell: You guys, cool, if you want to see more we've got rhls.com. Cut that! Rob: That's it for this week. Next week we take a journey into the wonderful world of quilting. Corinne: Hey! It's not just for your granny anymore! Rob: I guess not! Corinne: See you then! [Music Playing]