1860s Pantaloons

Myself and my friend Abby (her Instagram is here) spent a day obsessing over all things Little Women and decided that, once she's graduated, we needed to make 1860's costumes. While researching for this project I remembered the 1860's Pantaloons from Jill Salen's 'Vintage Lingerie' and decided I wanted to recreate them as part off my ensemble.

In the first half of the nineteenth century women wearing pantaloons became more popular. These garments would be worn as a base layer with a chemise. All pantaloons had a split crotch for when their wearer went to the loo, and was actually considered to be more modest than a joined crotch would have been. The bottom hems of pantaloons would often be embellished with frills and lace.

A pair of 1860's pantaloons from The Met

I dug my copy of the book off it's shelf and found the pantaloons pattern which I quickly decided was making my head hurt (both waistbands were labelled as the front and it was confusing me). I decided then to make a 'practice pair' just to see how the pattern went and to check whether the finished thing would fit me without having to alter any of the measurements.

I cut all of the pieces out and made up the plackets for the side openings.

Then I stitched the darts in and hemmed the crotch and leg openings.

 I had decided to add a lace insert were the legs gathered in and had some vintage (C. 1950's) lace that I felt would work. Because the lace had become very aged over time, parts had not stained evenly and I felt that the colour was to yellow to work with the fabric I decided to bleach a strip that was long enough for the project (there would be more than enough left over if it went disastrously wrong). The bleach was heavily diluted with water and the lace left in for 15 minutes. You can see the difference between the original and the bleached lace below.

The legs were gathered and the lace slip stitched on. The ruffles were also gathered and stitched onto the lace.

I stitched on the waistbands and worked some eyelets into the front waistband to allow for a drawstring ribbon.

In order to get the buttonhole placement right I decided to try the pantaloons on (over my jeans) and found that what I thought had been the front waistband was actually the back! This wouldn't have been a problem at all if it hadn't been for the little neat eyelets that I had just finished sewing and were now placed at the centre back of the pantaloons. I unpicked the (now back) waistband and made up a new one (luckily it was just a strip of fabric so it was really easy). I finished the waistband stitched the buttonholes by hand and sewed on the buttons (no drawstring ribbon this time).The pantaloons were finished and looked good enough to go on my Etsy! All I had to do was give it a quick dip in some water to wash out the fabric pen I had used too mark the stitching lines and leave it to dry... on a radiator...

...note to self: never leave stuff to dry on a radiator.

Next morning the pantaloons had dried, but they had what I at first thought in my sleepy state were burn marks from dirt that must have been on the radiator, I panicked and tried to bleach them which didn't work. My mum suggested they might be rust marks so I decided to try the lemon juice and sunlight method despite the fact that according to Google bleach apparently sets rust marks.

Amazingly we actually had a pretty sunny day outside, which in early March in Britain is quite rare, especially when we had snow just a week before.

Obligatory image of Steve the Snowman

Sceptically I hung the pantaloons up on the line and went to check them a few hours later expecting there to be no change...

Never underestimate the power of Sunlight!

Very happy with myself I took the now dry pantaloons inside to give them a press... and promptly scalded them with the iron

At this point I was almost ready to completely give up, but I figured bleaching for about ten minutes couldn't really hurt them any more than they already were, so into the sink they went...

The pantaloons, after being rust stained, bleached, bleached with sunlight,
scalded, and bleached (sob)

Once they had dried I very carefully ironed them and they were finally ready to go on my Etsy shop.
Needless to say I've learnt a lot more from this project than I intended!

The completed Pantaloons