Friday Flower, and Pattern Date Sleuthing

I'm on a profession-related listserve through my work email. Sonny from Louisiana, who is in the same line of work, posts Friday Flowers. I've been re-posting them to MySpace for ages but, since I suspect nobody actually reads MySpace any more, I'm branching out.

Sonny says, "Flowers are popping up all over, but these tiny fellows are my favorite early ones."

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I posted Design 8184 a few days ago in a New Patterns entry. Last night, I had a few minutes before bed so I pulled out the instruction sheet to see what else it had to say for itself.

I found that the fine print says that the paper pattern pieces don't include a hem allowance, and to add two or three inches of length accordingly. Wow, that's some "gotcha"! I would totally have missed that. Remember, folks: Always read your instructions all the way through before starting!

The fabric suggestions read:

"Spun rayons, gingham, shantung, chambray, piqué, poplin, eyelet cottons, lawn, butcher linen, taffeta, rayon crèpe, bengaline.

Crisp powder blue accented with navy blue buttons.

Gay rust, green, and white checked gingham skirt teamed with a white linen-like jacket, check-covered buttons.

Aqua rayon shantung scroll design print of brown and white."

I am totally on board with the rust/green/white check option. I'm seriously going to spend my lunch hour Googling "plaid."

* I don't normally go for pastels and neutrals but this orange/beige square plaid is nice. Very feminine and spring-y.
* Navy/blue/white is a little more striking.
* Blue/white/green/brown is a little like the rust/green/white suggestion.
* Blue/red/white is summery without screaming "July 4!".
* * * Hey, I do have a bunch of this sage/cream/red plaid left over from two failed dress projects. Hmm . . .

I don't have the original mailer, and most bulk-rate postal cancellations didn't have dates on them, anyway, but I guessed that this pattern probably fell into the 1945-1947 range. The skirt is still fairly short and narrow (granted, it's a juniors' pattern, but still) and 1948 patterns tend to have mid-shin, rather droopy skirts and slightly less exaggerated shoulders (it's almost an 1840's throwback look). However, the jacket is rather frivolous, with its lettuce-edge waistline and broad shoulders, so it's most likely post-war. More 1946 and 1947 images.

Sometimes you get clues inside the instruction sheet.

In this case, there were two "bait" images of other patterns you could order, and there was a little doodle of a pattern catalog. The date on the catalog-doodle is Spring 1947.

Now, a doodle in an instruction sheet is admittedly not very reliable. It's entirely possible that this was their stock image and that every pattern catalog for a decade had it. However, sewing pattern companies didn't want their products to be seen as outdated--lots of them have slogans on the outside along the lines of "Fashion fresh!" or "You're always in style when you dress with Simplicity"--so it's believable that the catalog the designer doodle was a current one.

And Spring 1947 seems like a very reasonable estimate.

The bait images included Design 8142 (which is awesome, and which I would love to find):

and Design 8146, both of which are also spring/summer patterns: