Friday, April 1, 2011

Lingrie leads to babies

I have been living in Norway for a year and a half now, with another 2 1/2 to go. The entire time we've been here I've been on the hunt for any trace of the seamstresses of 50 years ago. Allow me to explain. Sewing patterns never show up in thrift shops here. They all get thrown away. Sick, wrong, and horrible, I know. The only traces that anyone used to sew things for themselves is the occasional hand made dress popping up in a thrift shop from time to time.
I started to think for some reason that sewing things disappeared from Norway like the dinosaurs did in a mysteriously massive sewing cataclysm that wiped all traces of patterns out in one fell swoop. So I've been on a sort of pseudo-archeological hunt to track down the history of sewing in this mysterious land of the knitted sweater.
Today I had my first breakthrough. A tiny, dusty and dim antique shop that had a small stash of sewing patterns, and tucked haphazardly underneath that stash, were some of the most gorgeous sewing pattern catalogs from the 1940's I've ever seen. It's all in Norwegian, of course, but that's just a better incentive for me to pay more attention in my weekly Norwegian courses.
So for about $40 (dirt cheap by Norwegian standards) I bought it all up and raced home to carefully examine each page of my loot.

Can you say factory folds? Because I can.
 These sewing patterns were all in great shape, several of them in their original factory folds.

 I got a large bounty of ladies magazines from the 1940's and 1950's, some of which are packed full of knitting patterns, and great pattern advertisements.


 There was even a pattern catalog just for kids patterns.
All of the pictures below are from the summer of 1945 catalog. The German occupation of Norway ended May 8, 1945, and the fashion in this booklet clearly represents a country that's able to breathe again after being released from underneath the boot of an enemy.




 Check out this lingerie spread, it's to die for! In the picture below, the lingerie page has baby clothes tucked right in with almost every design... because, you know, lingerie leads to babies. This was just practical shopping.




 Lovely summer fashions.


Norway came into some major money some years ago when they discovered oil. With this influx of money came a very quick depreciation of anything old. Antiques are mostly cheap, if you can find them before the careless new generation throws them away. I'm now on a mission to find the last few remaining sewing patterns and save them from an evil generation of H&M clad Ikea shoppers toss them in the recycling bin.

SAVE THE PATTERNS!

19 comments:

  1. WOW! Gorgeous find! So many congrats!!

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  2. What a fantastic find! I love the fourth image. The illustrations are amazing.
    Angela

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  3. Oh my, these are amazing. The playsuits are extra cute. Lucky girl!

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  4. Great find...I could look at these for hours!!

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  5. Congrats on your find and thanks for sharing it with us.

    Christiana
    sewamusing.blogspot.com

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  6. Fantastic find! I love the illustrations :)

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  7. what a find! Congrats!

    I looked a bit more closely and found a solution for a skirt I'm constructing... the brown one on the very right on the 2nd pic incomplete, but I got what I needed.

    I can imagine how you felt. :-))))

    I never found any here in Germany, only once and they were absolutely not for me, incomplete and expensive. :-(

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  8. OOOOOOOOOOOhhh!!! those finds are great!!!!!!! Congrats!!! I enjoy to see all the images you post here!!
    So lucky girl you are!! AS you, here in mexico, well at least in my hometwon I have never found vintage patterns I just found some magazines from the 50's and 40's but not in my hometown I found them in mexico city.

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  9. Wow, amazing! I'm laughing at your image of H&M wearing Ikea buying youths. Good luck in your search!

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  10. What a fantastic find! enjoy your new treasures!

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  11. How fabulous, even the more special for the hunt!

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  12. Great finds! The funny part of this is that many of the patterns you show actually are Swedish. That is where the fashion came from back in the days (and still do...). Take it from me. I´m Norwegian! :-)

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  13. Wow what amazing finds. I'm a little bit jealous, and happy for you - but mostly jealous ;)

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  14. Wonderful find, lucky! Your title made me snicker.

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  15. Wow, what a wonderful find! It's really difficult to find old sewing patterns in Sweden as well, but we haven't got the Norwegian oil-money. One thing I do know is that not everyone used commercial patterns back in the day, my grandmother is a brilliant seamstress but she's never used a commercial sewing pattern in her life. Maybe this was more common up here in the north?
    Be sure to post anything you get stuck on language-wise, as I'm sure you have both Swedish and Norwegian readers to help you :)

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  16. Thanks for sharing! These images are great! What a find, I wish you every success for your pattern-saving goal :-) Sam xox

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  17. Hmm, thought you were about to make an announcement with that title!

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  18. droooooooooooooooooool...

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