Tuesday, May 17, 2011

1940s Dress Patterns

Sixteen years ago, While living in Indiana, I went to a small town yard sale. It was about 20 miles out in the country but I think almost every home in that small town was having a yard sale. What fun I had. The only thing I remember buying is a bag of about a dozen 1940s dress patterns. I love the 1940s style even though I was only a child then. In the intervening years and moving a couple of times, I lost track of where I had put these vintage patterns.
A few weeks ago, while cleaning up in the garage and going through storage boxes, I found that bag of patterns.
Wow, they are cuter than ever. In preparing these patterns to list on Etsy, I found out that the pattern pieces were machine cut without any markings. Complete, illustrated instructions were given so you would know what to do with the pattern pieces. I'm glad they don't do that anymore. A pattern size 18 had a 36" bust which today's patterns would be a size 12.
In researching 1940s dress patterns, I learned that one of my favorite patterns was actually a rare pattern and worth almost $40.00. It is the Betty Grable Hollywood dress pattern. It is now listed on my etsy shop.
http://www.allthingshomey.etsy.com

2 comments:

ewe scrap said...

wish I could sew! Love your new background!

Almost Precious said...

I'm not much of a seamstress but I will admit that the retro fashions had a lot of style to them. And yes, over the years sizes have changed. I used to wear a size petite 6/7 about 30 years ago, now I wear a petite size 2 ... not an easy size to find in today's department stores. :(

Found your blog on the etsy teams pages ... glad to see you figured out how to add a "followers" box. I'm now following. :)