Thursday, July 11, 2013

In doing your own custom dressmaking, be enthusiastic about it—it is a thoroughly fascinating sport!

Don't you just love the title of this post.  I can't take credit for it.  It comes from a 1930s publication called Paris Frocks at Home.   Earlier this week I stumbled up on a website VintageSewing.Info.  It's loaded with great sewing resources from the 1900s to the 1950s.  

I really enjoyed the 1930s lessons from Paris Frocks at Home.  

Here's another sample.

To do successful home custom dressmaking observe these cautions:
  1. Never economize on fabric. Someone has said a garment is never better than its fabric. Do not risk the misfortune of having a shabby garment before the season is over.
  2. Always buy the full amount of material called for by the table on the pattern envelope. Skimping always shows and makes your dressmaking so much more difficult and so much more time-consuming.
  3. Always hold the paper pattern against you to be sure of lengths and widths and general positions of lines, taking note of necessary changes. There can then be no unpleasant surprises in store for you.
  4. Don't copy the best selling design in the biggest department store in your city. Almost anyone can own a Ford.
  5. Pick out a pattern embodying lines which you wear well. This little book contains definite suggestions for doing this if you need to be reassured on this point.

And how about this:

Be yourself as you are and as you want to be. The frocks you wear will achieve this ambition for you. You can create a charmed circle of admiration wherever you go simply by the way you dress. Cultivate your gift for clothes. The puritan virtues concerning dress, while still virtues, are no longer in fashion. Enjoy your clothes.

I'm having so much fun reading these lessons, I hope you will too.

Enjoy!
Christiana

4 comments:

  1. Thank you for your post and the link information. Looks great reading.

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  2. Thanks for posting, I think all of these still ring true. I am very conscious these days of using quality fabric and avoiding the urge to get a real bargain fabric which often turns out to be more trouble than it's worth.

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  3. So true - thanks for posting these!

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  4. "Be yourself as you are and as you want to be" and this is still true!

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