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Home Pattern Company/ Ladies' Home Journal History
The Home Pattern company was founded by Condé Nast in 1905. It formed a relationship with the popular Ladies' Home Journal Magazine which began advertising their patterns.
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Simplicity Prevue from August of 1942 - Wartime Fashion
I'm taking a break from unboxing and organizing my pattern collection (how did I end up with two of so many rare patterns?!) to bring you the August 1942 edition of Simplicity Prevue advertising...
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McCall Sewing Pattern Dating and Collecting Resources
Collecting sewing patterns can be an entertaining (and often expensive) past-time. One of the most rewarding aspects of this can be hunting down more information about a particular pattern. This can be...
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Small Pattern Companies: The Royal Pattern Company
The Royal Pattern Company (not associated with Modes Royale) began selling sewing patterns in 1895 and printed their magazine Le Costume Royal beginning in 1896 to advertise their patterns. This was...
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Mary Brooks Picken - A life of writing and teaching.
Mary Brooks Picken is easily one of the most well-known names in vintage dressmaking. Born in 1886 in Arcadia, KS, she went on to author and co-author nearly 100 sewing and needlework books during her...
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New York Pattern Company - A Brief History
Not a lot of information is available about the New York Pattern Company. Luckily, what is known has been carefully researched and compiled in Joy Spanabel Emery's A History of The Paper Pattern Industry.
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Mending Damaged Sewing Patterns Part 1
Today I'd like to share with you a bit of my process and favorite tools for working with heavily damaged sewing pattern envelopes and instruction sheets.
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Mending Damaged Sewing Patterns Part 2
You can use the same mending tissue, small weights, and care we talked about in our previous post to mend large, complex tears in fragile pattern tissue pieces, too!
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A History of Butterick Pattern Advertising
Continuing our theme of vintage/ antique sewing pattern dating resources, today we will discuss the resources one might use to date a Butterick sewing pattern. Much history is available online about...
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Adventures in Sewing - Facing Scallops
In the late 1940s, the McCall Style News store pattern advertising leaflet started printing a sewing advice column written by Marian Corey. These columns usually featured a how-to lesson on one of the...
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Your Size in Patterns circa 1951
Modern dressmakers often ask me, "How do you know what size to look for in Vintage patterns?"
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Berth Robert and the Secret to Semi-Made Dresses
If I had a dollar for every time I've grumbled to myself about having to cut patterns out from fabric before sewing them, well, my fabric budget would be very large indeed. I don't know what it is...
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McCall's Magazine July 1919 - Fashions For August.
I was recently digitizing and adding pages from McCall's Magazine from July of 1919 to my pattern research database. When I came across this lovely page of post-WWI sewing patterns, I just had to share.
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Butterick 4485 from 1923 - A Pattern Study
This pattern came to me quite literally crumpled into a ball and stuffed inside the envelope (which then got damp, poor thing).
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McCall's Magazine April 1935: Taffeta and Chiffon.
Today for some gorgeous fashion eye-candy, I present the following page from McCall's Magazine April 1935. You can find a complete collection of the fashion pages in this magazine for download here.
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La Femme Chez Elle and Her Friend the Pattern Sheet:
Some of you might have noticed that I hoard vintage French magazines and their patterns. Sometimes I even let them go to other homes that might enjoy them as much as I do... sometimes.
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Smart Little Gifts of Cut Felt - by Isabel Ingraham.
From Modern Priscilla Magazine December 1926:
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A Fabric Encyclopedia
In my long experience working with vintage sewing books and patterns, I have sometimes come across quite a few fabric terms that one might often not see regularly. Many of the terms included below...
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A Few Pretty Pages of NeedleCraft Magazine from January of 1927
For your vintage eye candy today I have a few pretty pages from the January 1927 edition of Needlecraft Magazine.
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The 1907 McCall's Magazine and Her Pattern Friend
Would you like to know why I hoard damaged antique magazines?
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