How to Make Starch for Pleated Pants

Series Summary

Since the dawn of time, men and women alike have preferred straight clothing over wrinkled clothing. Cave drawings uncovered in the Mesopotamian Desert wilderness show women heating rocks and rubbing them on fur clothing. Wrinkled clothing was actually an offense punishable by death in Hammurabi's Code. A recent archaeological discovery has uncovered the oldest laundromat in recorded history while excavating the ancient city of Ur. Cleverly named Laund-UR-mat, this laundromat, actually started by Abraham's youngest brother Ephraham, is historical proof that even thousands and thousands of years ago, human beings found ironing clothes inconvenient and tedious and that people would rather outsource ironing than take the time to do it at home. Fortunately, there is help for those of us that burn holes through shirts and ruin blouses. The experts at Expert Village have made an easy to follow and completely free video series to make ironing at home an option again.

In this free video series, watch as professional homemaker Marti Swanson teaches how to iron pleated pants.

Video Transcript

"Hi, my name is Marti. On behalf of expert village.com, I'm going to show you how to iron a pair of cotton pants today with pleats. One of the things I'm going to be doing is starching these pants so that the crease will hold a little bit better and the cotton fabric. Most of you are familiar with spray starch you can get at the store. I have an alternative that I like to use. I like to use a mixture of cornstarch and water cornstarch you can often find in your kitchen cabinets. Take one part cornstarch and one part water and dissolve your solution. In this case, I've used one teaspoon of cornstarch and one cup of water. To begin with we need to check what are garments is made out of. These happen to be 100% cotton; that means it can tolerate high heat, it can also handle the starch which will help the fabric hold it's shape while we iron it."