Holiday Sale Coupon Code

Hello my dears, I hope everyone has had a lovely weekend so far. This is just a quick post to tell you that until Nov 28th, everything at Mrs. Depew Vintage is 30% off!

Simply use the coupon code above at checkout. This code will work at both Mrsdepew.com, and in our Etsy shop.

Happy weekend!

Anna

Found in a Bag - the 1920's Dress

As many of you already know, my mother was an antique dealer - her specialty happened to be vintage clothing and she was a master at restoring difficult pieces. Those great items though that she found beyond repair were always saved hoarded to be later used to help in the restoration of something else. Some pieces ended up as parasol covers, beaded purse linings, or period correct doll clothes.
Others were forgotten about and tucked away in every spare corner and cranny she could find in the antique house she owned - also slowly being restored. When she passed away, my sister and I went through many boxes, and sometimes, rather than digging through the contents of an entire box, I would follow a hunch and decide to give an entire box a new home in my sewing room hoard, sight unseen.
It has felt special, opening these boxes over 2 years after her passing, and feeling close to her again.
My most recent excavation brought to light a dusty Dollar General bag with what I can only describe as the pleasing weight and bounce of silk inside.
I decided to photograph the bag as I dumped its contents on my sewing table, and what follows is my experience of said bag. I though you might like discovering the "Dress in a bag" as much as I did.

My 1938 Simplicity Catalog - Equal Parts Sad and Beautiful...

Hello all,
Today for your enjoyment I have more photos from my 1938 Simplicity store counter catalog.
This is the first vintage catalog I ever purchased, and I was delighted to find that it helped me accurately date my Simplicity S-Series sewing patterns.

More importantly though, it has also become a fascinating and sometimes personal glimpse into the mind of one of its previous owners. The lady who had it starting in 1939 used this big, heavy ungainly tome as a recipe book and war-time journal!
Beautiful page after beautiful page is peppered with recipes, articles, and jokes pasted over stunning illustrations and written over with notes like the following...

"1944 December 21. Thursday A.M. 11-20 o'clock. (So and so) has just stopped by on her way to the auction farm. She had been to the hospital to get a shot in the arm - I have just finished making the children some fruit divinity candy. It's so good. Must get the box packed and in the mail. How I wish they were home with me. ... God Bless them, and every soldier and sailor..."

As she is writing this blessing on her troops, the U.S. 101st Airborne and others are surrounded at Bastogne, fighting for their lives and cut off from supplies and reinforcements. This was part of one of the bloodiest battles of World War II, the Battle of the Bulge, where the U.S. alone lost 19,000 brave men, the allies nearly as many, and the Germans so many more.

It makes my heart break a little for her and every other woman who has ever waited for a troop to come home safely, no matter what side they were on, and reminds me how blessed I am that mine hasn't been called to an active war-zone yet.

Note, you can find an interesting looking recipe for old fashioned divinity candy here. I'm going to make some myself, sit in some warm sunshine, and hope that the box of candy made its way into the warm, safe hands of whoever she sent it to.

I'll just leave these here for you to read and enjoy without my commentary on the rest of them. Her notes are perfect enough all on their own.

Yes, yes it is!

We have previously talked about Simplicity 2229, featured above, in one of our Sew Expensive posts.

How to Add a Sewing Pattern to the Vintage Pattern Wikia.

Hello my dear readers. Today I have an updated tutorial for you on how to add a sewing pattern to the Vintage Pattern Wiki.
When I first started collecting vintage sewing patterns I found the Wiki page a useful resource for researching, buying and selling sewing patterns. While it has its limitations (it's not the most user-friendly template) once you get the hang of it, it can be rather handy.
Not to mention, when you add a pattern that wasn't there before, it feels a bit like a public service to other future pattern collectors.

So let's get started. Once you've created an account and logged in, you're ready to add your patterns!
First, search for the pattern you want to add and make sure it's not already there. This can happen sometimes. The search might not pull up your pattern, you might have typed the name/ number wrong, etc. With McCall's patterns, it's important that you pay close attention to whether your pattern says McCall or McCall's on the envelope, as this will make a difference.
For example, McCall 3581 is the 1940's Women's windbreaker pattern I'll be adding in our tutorial, and McCall's 3581 is a 1970's menswear pattern.

Using Evernote to Catalog Your Sewing Pattern Collection

Today, my dear readers, I'm going to talk a bit about keeping track of a large pattern collection. If you've been collecting as long as I have, you know that you can loose track of whether or not you have a specific pattern in your collection. More than once over the years, I've bought a pattern on Ebay or Etsy, only to realize later that I already have the same one in some box or other I've forgotten about.

Recently, at the suggestion of a friend of mine, I downloaded an app called Evernote to my iPad and tried cataloging 15 patterns to see how I liked it. This was on a Friday afternoon, and I liked it so much, that I then spent the rest of the entire weekend photographing and logging a vast section of my collection. It has taken me a while (months, really, the hoard is that big), but slowly and surely I have added my entire collection of sewing patterns and I am so glad that I did (more on that later).

(I'm just going to point out quickly that this isn't a sponsored blog post - I haven't been compensated for writing this, I just really love this app!)

The app is pretty user friendly and can sync across your mobile and desktop devices quite seamlessly once downloaded. To give you an idea of how handy that is, a few days ago, I was killing time in a doctor's office waiting room and scrolling through patterns on Ebay using my phone to pass the time. I found a great dress pattern and thought, I should buy that, but it does look a bit familiar... So I switched to my Evernote app briefly and typed in the pattern name and number, and sure enough, there it was in my collection! I saved $20!

The pattern in question... though having two of this gem wouldn't be the worst thing ever...

Before I go into the many benefits of having your collection catalogued, let me show you how easy it is.

A Free French Turban Pattern from 1932

 Hello my dears. I woke up this morning with the strongest urge to play in my vast (scary, like found one day dead, crushed under a stack of magazines, VAST) collection of vintage French magazines.

While enjoying a particularly lovely edition of C'est La Mode from 1932, I found a charming little turban-making lesson that I had previously overlooked.

The lesson is of course in French, but being of a mood to share, I translated the instructions for you over my morning coffee, (oh, freshly-roasted Costa Rica beans from Acme Coffee in Seaside, how I adore thee!) cleaned up the illustrations for you, and voila!

We have a pattern/ tutorial for a lovely French turban that you can make out of square scraps of slightly stretchy fabrics.

I would recommend using matte jersey, or perhaps even a stretch silk charmeuse blend. You might try it with woven fabrics, or even ribbon, but you'll want to braid the body more loosely, I imagine. The pattern doesn't include any suggested yardage so I would say you'll need at least half a yard of fabric to be safe, and about 1/2 yard of matching grosgrain ribbon for the band.

Anyhow, I'm off to get a haircut, do some shopping, and enjoy the rest of my hopefully relaxing weekend.

Happy sewing!

Happy Independence Day and Free Pattern Winners!

Hello everyone!
I'm happy to announce that we have some giveaway winners! If you're on the list below, email me at afewthreadsloose@gmail.com to let me know where I can send your prizes!

Our 6 winners, as chosen by a random number generator are:

• Amarantha 
• Linda M. Mundy
• Mokki
• Marie-Therese Church
• Megan
• Robin
  
  Happy sewing!