What about the boys? Goodness me, I almost forgot to tell you how I made Pilgrim pants for our boys!
Well, first, I was really lucky and found these girls capris at the YWCA thrift store. They already looked like breeches and they were only $2. Score! They were also a size 5, and Elliott was 5 years old at the time.
First, I used a seam ripper to remove the pink bow on the waistband.
Then, I turned my attention to these pink buttons on the cuffs.
I checked my button collection (I bought a few bulk lots on Ebay, years ago) for some suitable replacements.
I found four matching buttons in my bottle of green buttons.
It was easy to snip off the pink buttons and replace them with new ones that would match.
Then, Elliott wore these breeches to our home school coop as part of his presentation on 19th-century immigrants. The pants came home with grass-stained knees, so I soaked them in OxiClean.
Now, I love OxiClean, but sometimes it doesn’t love me back. This was one of those times. See how the dye was randomly sucked out of the fabric on the waistband and the fly area?
A bit also came out of the seat of the pants. I guess the dye wasn’t totally fixed and stable in those places, and the OxiClean revealed where it was weak! I decided to dye these breeches to cover the problem.
First, I planned to remove more of the color from the breeches so that the material would be lighter, like the light splotches. This might help the new dye job to “take” more evenly. So, I used RIT Color Remover that I purchased at Walmart.
I filled the washer with hot water, added the breeches, and sprinkled in the color remover powder. The stuff smells like a home perm. Pheee-ewww!
The breeches came out with a lot of the green dye removed. The new, overall color was close to the lighter shade caused by the Oxi-Clean incident.
Then, I used this entire bottle of brown dye to color the pants, according to RIT’s directions.
The breeches came out great! The dark brown dye virtually colored over the lighter spots.
As often happens, the thread remained green, since it isn’t 100% cotton, like the breeches material. (Thread is typically a polycotton blend because it is stronger than if it were all cotton.)
And, here are the finished breeches on Elliott!
These breeches are so great to have in our costume collection! They will lend themselves to all sorts of time periods: Pilgrim, Colonial, Regency, and late 19th-Century/early 20th-Century!
Now, what do you do if a pair of pre-made breeches doesn’t fall into your lap? That’s what I’ll show you next! You can easily convert a pair of pants into breeches.
