A lil bit of vintage.

In recent years I have amassed quite a collection of vintage patterns.  I won a couple of bulk purchases (25 and 30) on ebay and now my pattern drawer runeth over.  I think I've done quite well with the ones I have made so far. Though I've found the sizing is a bit different.  Also there is the fact that a lot of the 60's patterns don't appear to have any instructional lines on them, just perforations where the darts should be.  I'm also not so sure about the applying the interfacing directly on the fabric instead of the facing pieces.  Maybe this postdated fusible interfacing because after one or two washes the interfacing started to come away from the fabric.  It is also just interesting working with different styles.  There are just so many great shift dresses to choose from.  I've also bought quite a few 50/60's shirt style dresses which I am yet to make up.  Here is a small sample of the ones I've made up thus far from my 70's patterns collection.

Vintage McCalls



 

 

 

Butterick 5242

The pinafore was my first foray into vintage patterns.  I bought this and several other patterns on a website for vintage patterns maybe 4 years ago. I think this has all now been superceded by etsy and ebay where you can usually find the patterns you are looking for.  I have also had a few kind people have given me their mum's old patterns becuase they know I love working with them.  This pinafore was pretty easy to make, however, I had to add some material to the waistband  as the sizing was a bit on the slim side.  The side edges are encassed with bias binding which was a technique I hadn't used before.  As for Butterick 6617 I am quite happy with how this turned out.  It is unfortunately on the large size and the belt helps to bring it in. But you can see that is one supersized collar. I kind of lose my neck amongst all the material.  I had a desaster with another vintage pattern with the zip front and collar. I haven't had a lot of experience in recent years with collars and some of the pattern instructions are not very clear. But all in all I am pretty pleased with these.