Happy Labor Day, all! What better pattern to feast your eyes upon today (as you relax and enjoy not laboring) than Advance 6235, described on the envelope back as "The Career Gal Dress"? I mean, a collar inset, stripes, button trim and a wiggle dress silhouette -- what's not to love?
Yellow Plaid and Gray are clearly in cahoots. Sharp dressers are sharp thinkers -- and in no time, they'll be running the company. Keep your eyes on them!
We've all been stuck in conversations we can't get out of. Pity poor Red in McCall's 5864:
"And then Linda said she was going to bring a lemon pie and I said no, I wanted to bring my lemon chiffon cake and we can't have too much lemon at the luncheon because when there's too much tartness in a menu it really takes away from the savory quality of the casseroles, which is what anyone who knows anything about cooking knows but would you believe that Sheila Johnson said..."
Sometimes being overly polite, like Red there, just leads to pain. It doesn't hurt to take a page from the animal kingdom in these situations. I once had a wonderful dog named Hopkins -- a Corgi/Shepherd mix full of attitude who basically looked like a German Shepherd who'd been hit by a shrinking ray. Anyway, every morning we'd walk by a house where another dog would throw itself at the fence, barking its fool head off. Most dogs, given that situation, would bark right back -- but Hopkins would trot on by without a break in his step, without even a glance to that yapping idiot. And I can't help but be reminded of that every time I look at Advance 9798:
There's Purple, yap-yap-yapping...and Black and White just blissfully tunes her out. Well done!
I am one of those people who looks horrible in most photos. I mean it. Nine times out of ten, the camera will catch my eyes somewhere between half mast and closed and my smile crookedly sliding off my face. Recently I found a baby photo where I sported that expression. It actually was a tremendous relief: I realized that my horrid photos could be blamed on genetics.
If you think I'm going to post examples here, well, you're sadly mistaken. But if you want an example of how my eyes tend to droop like saggy curtains, making me seem drunk? Check out Advance 9926:
And Advance 2831 really knocks it home. It's the whole package: insipid smile, closed eyes, dork dork DORK! Really, I swear this could be me:
These illustrations are almost as confusing as the one with the mysterious chair I posted about last week. The whole advantage of illustrations over photos is that you don't have to deal with awkward moments like these. What made the illustrator decide to go this route? Why capture your model at the worst possible moment?!
Maybe...maybe some models curse illustrators the same way I curse cameras. It's the only explanation I can think of!
Mary was lucky. Mary believed the numbers told her how fast she was flying toward her dreams.
Advance 7819, 1956.
Put down your coffee and drool:
Purty purty!
That's about as much as my brain could spit out when I first saw Advance 5605. Look at it! The contrast lapels and cuffs! The double-breasted closure! The little tucked dickey! And..is that shirring on view 3?
Gorgeous.
Someone find this for me in a B34, OK? I'll be ever so grateful.
Hey! It's MEN'S WEEK here at Pattern Junkie!
Why? Well, Peter over at Male Pattern Boldness had a fantastic post last week on the paucity of male sewers, and Gertie followed it up with a wonderful post of her own yesterday. Both got me thinking (er, "losing hours to the Vintage Pattern Wiki"), and there's just too much male pattern goodness not to share.
I want to kick things off with a little historical survey of Men of Patternland. Personally, I think men's patterns used to offer more interesting design variations than they do now. One thing I can say with confidence? Men in decades past could look at a pattern envelope and say to themselves, "Hey, that's a guy I'd like to be." Now? That's not so true.
Take the 1930s. What do you see when you look at Simplicity 1793? I see sophisticated. Literate. A man who knows how to mix a martini:
The 1940s. How much cooler can you get than film noir and Bogie?!
The 1950s: men smoked cigarettes and talked about space age things. (Check out the shirt, by the way -- I love the design!)
In the 1960s, men were people with Things! To! Do!
The 1970s. A touch of mod remains, and funk creeps in. Sure, Yellow there looks like he might corner you at a party and talk non-stop about his hi-fi system, but Blue and Brown were hunks in their time even with the double knit polyester!
Now let's jump over to McCall's and see what the men of today have to look forward to in the pages of the pattern catalog. What reflections of themselves do they see?
I rest my case.
P.S. I have a copy of the 70s pattern, Simplicity 9992, size 38-40, for anyone who wants it. The problem? No instruction sheet! Email me if you want it -- first come, first served. (My email is at the top left-hand corner of the page.) Just promise to send photos of the completed project!
UPDATE: the pattern has found its new home!
My first thought upon seeing this pattern was something like "want-this-in-my-size-where-can-I-get-it?", which is usually my first thought upon encountering any vintage pattern. My second thought --
-- well, I had no second thought. My neurons all misfired at once. When I came out of the void and stopped staring at the pattern envelope in gaping, awestruck wonder, I began to imagine the discussion at Advance HQ before the pattern envelope featuring this chic housewife and her cartoon friend hovering a foot above her kitchen chair went into production:
HEAD OF MARKETING: Great, so we're all set on 3115. Moving on to 3116...well, gorgeous job on the dress, Betty.
BETTY: Thank you. The yoke is very well-designed.
HEAD OF MARKETING: That it is. Your seaming is beautiful as always. As for the illustration...well, Pierre, I do like the hands on the hips pose. It's very jaunty.
PIERRE: She is like a French sailor, oui.
HEAD OF MARKETING: Why is she so much smaller than the other model?
PIERRE: You do this all the time in American patterns, no? One giantess and one little one?
BETTY: Why is she floating a foot above the wicker chair?
PIERRE: Ah! It is very hip, no? Like the Rolling Stones song. She is Mother's Little Helper.
HEAD OF MARKETING: I'm sorry. I don't think they're referring to -- no. I don't really know what they're singing about, but I'm quite sure it's not a floating mini-helper.
PIERRE: She is like a genie then? Like the television show with the woman in the bottle, except that she lives in the chair --
BETTY: You can't live in a wicker chair. There's no way to close it up for the night.
PIERRE: How can you really live in a bottle? It's magic. You must suspend your disbelief.
BETTY: A bottle has a top, a bottom and sides. A wicker chair has -- where does she sleep? Where do her velvet curtains and pillows go?
PIERRE: Mother's Little Helper, she is ingenious. At night she hangs --
HEAD OF MARKETING: Approved! We're moving on to 3117.
Today I was in the process of listing this Advance pattern in my shop when I noticed the writing on the bottom right-hand corner:
"This pattern features The Bishop Method of clothing construction." Curious to know more about the Bishop Method, I pulled out the instructions. No help there -- it's one of those amazingly efficient one-sheet instruction pages that you so often find in older patterns.
A little more poking around revealed this pattern on etsy, which offered a teensy bit of info on the mysterious Method of Bishop:
The Bishop Method, apparently, features fitting with "Key Grain Lines." Hmm. Well, I DO agree that grain lines are important. In fact, the first rule of sewing that my mother drilled into my head was the importance of aligning the grain before cutting out the pattern. (The second was "Never trust Simplicity patterns," which may not be quite as universal a rule.)
Further googling revealed copies of "The Bishop Method of Clothing Construction" by Edna Bryte Bishop available on etsy and Amazon. Never one to turn down an excuse to buy a vintage sewing book, I ordered one -- hopefully I'll be able to report back soon. Anyone out there know more about Advance's Bishop Method?
I made a promise to myself when I embarked upon costume countdown week to limit my use of clowns -- believe me, I could feature vintage clown patterns all week. Each one has a little something special to make it just not right in that way clowns are. Take, for example, Butterick 3169, a 1964 pattern I found in Midvale Cottage's etsy shop:
Oh, you may think this is just a tableau of frolicking kids -- but take a closer look at the one in the upper right hand corner. WHY IS THE APPLE FLOATING?!
My personal fave, though, is Advance 701, which appears to be either from the 1940s or early 1950s. Interestingly, it seems to have been issued with two different illustrations -- perhaps one version one year and one the next? The illustration style and price suggest too close a date for this to be a case of pattern re-numbering.
Here's illustration one, from the pattern's page on the Vintage Sewing Wiki. Our happy Halloween couple traises down the block for a Halloween party:
Next, look at the pattern listing over at Spessarite Sole. I think someone spiked the Pink Zombie Punch with truth serum, because a scene of Who's Afraid of VIrginia Woolf? proportions took place between this illustration and the last one:
Advance consistently had such gorgeous illustrations, and these are both worth framing -- although I think you'd have to give it a title like "From Revelry to the Death of Love."
