Making a Kimono Sleeve Dress from the Woman's Institute

This morning I was gently riffling through my Woman's Institute book collection and inside a copy of Dress Construction and Finishing I found the coolest little booklet!

It was meant to come along with actual fabric dress pieces sent to the student to sew, and then return for examination! Can you just image getting a dress in the mail, already cut, just waiting to be sewn together? How fun!

For those of you unfamiliar with it, the Woman's Institute was a dressmaking and millinery instruction school that operated mainly by correspondence.

You can read all about their courses and book in a few different publications including Dressmaking Made Easy, Home Study Courses, and What the Woman's Institute Means to Me.

For your enjoyment, here is the lesson booklet in its entirety.

You can make a dress similar to this by using a straight-line one-piece dress pattern.

Sew Expensive... Vogue's New Book for Better Sewing.

Hello lovely readers. For the last few days I have been watching an Ebay auction, waiting with bated breath (what does that even mean?!) to see how much this lovely little gem would sell for. Last night, a first edition, 1952 copy of Vogue's New Book for Better Sewing sold for an amazing $153.50. And it didn't even come with the original dust jacket (a huge contributing factor to the value of a rare book)!

Naturally this delighted me. Not only is this a sensational sum for a sewing book, I was smugly reveling in the fact that I was lucky enough to pick up the exact same book last year in an antique shop for a whopping $7.50. I may have even done a very undignified little dance, spilling my coffee this morning when I saw the ended auction. I may have even terrified the cat and confused my husband by whooping loudly, seemingly for no reason.

And let me tell you, this book is worth every penny ($7.50 or $150, you want a copy). It is by far one of my favorite sewing books.

Many of you familiar with the sewing blogosphere know this book well from reading Gertie's New Blog for Better Sewing. It was this book that inspired Gretchen to start what I consider to to be the most well-written, and most popular sewing blog on the internet today.
If you aren't familiar with her story, it's a wonderful tale that makes you want to just curl up on the floor and hug your sewing machine.

For those of you who don't have hundreds of dollars just laying around to buy books with, keep your eyes open at thrift shops and antique stores. Sometimes a copy will briefly show up for $20- $30 on etsy or ABEBooks. So far though, there isn't a copy selling for less than $199 on the internet. The most expensive copy online right now? It's $248 on Etsy.
Good luck with the hunt, ladies.