Mystery du jour

More or less on a whim (and with the vague recollection of similar pieces in old ladies' china cabinets), i scooped up a little lusterware teapot last week.  It's marked, and i've found the mark identified in a couple catalogues, so i know the manufacturer is Porzellanmanufaktur Rudolf Wächter... but i haven't been able to pin down when the company was using that particular version of the mark.  It seems they began using it around 1927, but vexingly, no one seems to give an end date - so other than the fact that the company folded in 1974, i don't have much to help narrow it down.

Cute little thing though, isn't it?

Back to the flea market!

As sure a sign of spring as the first daffodils peeking out, today was a sunny Saturday morning and the opening of the season at the Harper's Ferry flea market.  This was my prize, a 1930s tied quilt in a variant of the Double Pyramid pattern:

I love all the cheerful colors and prints in this, and i'm sure i'll have all sorts of fun trying to identify and date them.  There are some spots where a particular fabric ran short, and one with a similar - but not matching - color and pattern was substituted to complete the block.  Some nice work by the quilter to pair those two prints, because you don't notice the difference at first glance...

It's been mended in places too - some more expertly than others.  Here's a single block, so you can see the pattern, and also a detail of the ties, and some more of those great fabrics:

Sometimes it helps to be devious - er, creative...

Dating mail order patterns can be tricky.  If you've got the mailing envelope, sometimes you get lucky with a date on the postmark, or a postage meter that can be narrowed down to a particular timeframe.  Sometimes all you've got to go on is hairstyle in the pattern illustration.  And sometimes, you can find a way to get sneaky...

The one i'm listing today has no date, a postage rate that doesn't seem to narrow things down much, and a hopelessly blurred postage meter number (yep, you can try to look up the meter number - there are folks who collect and track metered postage as a hobby, and they're online too).  My knee-jerk reaction to the illustration was that it was late 1970s - but could i pin it down at all?

The dress style is the sort that might crop up in a wide range of years, so no help there.

But it turns out, this pattern, from Grit, also advertised a bunch of craft booklets on the back of the envelope.  There, i hoped, was my ticket.

A few quick searches later, i found copyright dates of 1977 and 1978 for such titles as "Thrifty Crafty Flowers" and "Envelope Patchwork Quilts" - bingo!  Enough to suggest that my initial guess was probably pretty close...

The ones i'm keeping

I was going to list his one.  Really.  Had it pulled out, put in order, counted and checked, and it's in fine shape.  I love the ruffles, but i've got a dress with a similar bodice, and if i really had a mind to, i could take a pattern from that.  There are already a couple of 1940s dresses in the project queue.

But when i went to write the listing, i found i couldn't get past the item title.

This is why:

I adore the drawings, and the over-the-top enthusiasm of the description!  Superior seems to have done this with a line of patterns aimed at teens in the '40s - i've seen at least one other set of pattern instructions in the same format.  I haven't been able to pin down an exact date, but suspect it's a wartime issue.  I've tried contacting the Sears archives to get dates for Superior pattern numbers, but haven't ever managed to get a response of any kind.  But there are probably catalogs out there - another research project!

Aprons and caps

The Woman's Institute of Domestic Arts & Sciences (you have to admire the sheer chutzpah of the name) published a number of little instructional booklets on dressmaking, patterns, and various types of garments, throughout the 1910s and 1920s.  They're the work of Mary Brooks Picken, who wrote staggering numbers of books on sewing and fashion over the course of her long life.  I've gathered copies of a few of the titles, and thought i'd share some of the pages from a 1922 volume, Aprons and Caps, which opens with the explanation,"Bustles, hoop skirts, and boned bodices come and go, but aprons, like table napkins, seem always necessary."

One imagines she would nod in approval at the renewed vogue of the apron after its near-extinction.

Half-Size patterns

Pattern companies have, over the years, come up with various ways to help dressmakers fit different figures.  One of these schemes was Simplicity's half-size patterns.  If you look at vintage patterns, you run across them now and again.  I'd noticed that the bust, waist, and hip measurements had slightly different proportions.  But from the name "half-size" and the different measurements, one might reasonably assume that they were intended for women who fell in between the regular pattern sizes...

...but it turns out, that's not all.  I discovered this reading 1940s and 1950s sewing books, like this one.  It doesn't tell you all this on the pattern envelope, and if you don't really study and compare ALL the measurements, you might never know.  Here's what i learned:

Most patterns are drafted to fit someone who's about 5'6" or 5'7" - that part i knew.  Since i'm not that tall, i often have to check and adjust waist length, skirt length, sleeve length.  But a half-size pattern is drafted with narrower shoulders, a little fuller hip, and a shorter overall height - to fit someone 5'3" or 5'4".

This is really useful information, the sort that can save time and grief in fitting patterns (and as i don't have a dress form or a handy fitting assistant, the closer i can start to a good fit, the better...).  I think i need to keep expanding my collection of vintage sewing books, to cover different decades and pattern manufacturers - i don't know what other nuggets i have yet to discover!

I've got a fair collection of books, from the 1910s to the 1970s (excepting the 1930s - have to look for something to fill in that gap).  The good news is that you can now find a lot of this sort of thing reproduced online.  There's Google Books, of course, but my first stop would be VintageSewing.info - it's a great resource.  (For handy reference at the sewing table, though, it's hard to beat having a print edition in hand!)

The ones i'm keeping...

...being a periodic peek at my pattern stash and related goodies.

Today's selection?  This early 20th century McCall pattern:

How early?  Well, that's a very interesting question.  It gives a patent date on the back of the pattern, April 21, 1908 (no patent number, which would make it quick and easy to look up, but i'm not complaining...).  However, that patent isn't for an individual pattern design, but for the "guide chart" system that keys the instructions to portions of the garment illustrations.  Yep, that little bitty fine print on the back of the pattern envelope and those tiny little line drawings are all the instructions you get...

So we know at least that it's not earlier than April 21, 1908 - but how much later?  This being a child's pattern, the sizes are given by age rather than measurement, and i know that's an indicator of an older pattern, but i don't know just when McCall switched to sizing them by measurement.  A boy's shirt is also not the trendiest of garments, so the design of the garment only gives you a ballpark on this one.  I have seen early 1920s McCall patterns that have a different, much more ornate envelope design, but don't know if that was used on their whole line, nor exactly when it came into use... more research!

A mystery...

Got this in a big box o' patterns, and i'm trying to pin it down, so far without notable success. It's an old pajamas-and-slippers pattern from Sears, but is not a "Superior" issue - looks more like a mail order pattern, and is in a funky, narrow, printed wax paper envelope. The search continues, but if you've got any leads, i'd be grateful if you shared them... it's such a fun little pattern!

Fun with Pattern Research

In chatting at a local history program, a friend seemed disappointed to learn that i don't have any 1920s patterns in stock right now. Turns out she's looking for something to use for uniforms for domestics, something that would be appropriate to the 1918-1922 period they want to portray at Morven Park. Never one to pass up an interesting research challenge, i said i'd look into it a bit and see what leads i could send her.

(That 1927 dressmaking book i just got is looking better all the time... and i've got another one inbound that was printed in 1922, but to judge from the plates, the content is from the teens; pictures when it arrives, i promise)

A lot of the photos online have little or no accompanying info (date, location, rights...), and so aren't the sort of thing you want to steer people to, but gave me a bit of an idea what reproduction and period patterns i could recommend. I'm pretty comfortable up through the late 19th century, but haven't done much 20th - this was fun. And who knows, maybe it'll turn into another project.