Looking at a make-do job...

 I'm sure there is someone out there who will look at this post and think I'm making fun of what someone did a couple of decades ago.

And that's not the point at all.

In the 'I'm doing small tasks in my spare time' category, I brought a pair of knickered-up pants home to replace the spent elastic.

Only as I got into it I realized I was looking at something else all together.

Now...let's say you're a mom in the early to mid 1990's and your youngster is in the church Christmas production.  Time is tight and you're handed a pair of pants and told to 'just cut the legs off below the knees and put some elastic in them.'

Only...you really don't sew.  And you don't own a sewing machine.  But all the moms have been asked to sew /altar up/ convert/ create their kids' costumes.

So whaddya do?

Well...you cut the legs off as best you can with the scissors you have.

 No sewing machine means you're going to have to hand sew it...even though you haven't done any handsewing since that cross-stitch thing you did in 7th grade home ec, er, family science...

And, you know, you don't have any elastic...how much would you get?  Maybe...you'll make do with what you have...

After all, it's just for a couple of performances, right?  Grab a couple of rubber bands and have at it.

I'm actually pretty much in awe of this mom's ingenuity.  And I know it can't have been easy to hand sew that casing around the rubber bands.

She had no way of knowing that 25ish years later someone in another church in another state would be taking her hard work apart to fit those breeches on another kid.

It did what it had to do at the time for hers.