I'm Ba-ack with Adventures in Sewing...

After three weeks of trotting across the globe, visiting family and raiding antique shops as I go, I'm back in green, rainy, and magical Norway. I'm exhausted and fighting off some major jet lag and a shocking lack of sleep (toddlers should be banned from airplanes, no offense parents) so I'm going to keep this short and sweet.

In my growing collection of vintage pattern company flyers are some lovely glimpses of the sewing world's advice column equivalent (rotten sentence, I know, but I'm sleepy, so just go with it.)
These little articles were one page features called "Adventures in Sewing" by Marian Corey, author of the 1951 "McCall's Complete Book of Dressmaking".

Here is one from McCall's Style News, September 1947 edition. (you can find a pdf for the whole edition in my etsy shop).

My head is on backwards, but let's talk about marking our patterns, shall we?

Here is the text in a larger, more readable size:

Stay tuned for more yet to come, including another Mail Call post, and a sneak peak at the whole suitcase full of sewing loot I brought back with me.
And now, to sleep.

The Winner, and whole bunch of flowers.

We have a winner for this week's vintage pattern pdf giveaway.

The winner of the above vintage 1940's bra pattern pdf file by random number generator is The Creative Miss W.

Congratulations!

On another note, I just learned how to make really gorgeous flowers out of napkins of all things!
 I found some great napkins in different colors with a great raised damask texture from my local Norwegian version of the dollar store. So in other words, the five dollar store.

I made them in  two sizes, large wall size, and small enough for a vase. The large ones I put in a row in my stairwell.

Free Pattern

I have stumbled across a lovely blog called Neu4baur.
I find it be quite full of brilliant sewing and fashion whatnot, and highly recommend you check it out.
Neu4baur is also offering a pdf for free of the awesome pattern below.

The pattern is part of a new and brilliant project that involves digitizing patterns for the modern age. I can't wait to see more. This particular pattern is from the rare and reclusive German vintage pattern magazines. They are hard to find, and even harder to approach as a seamstress, and I'm excited to see how her approach works with such a challenge.
If you decide to sew this pattern, drop me a line, I'd love to know how it works for you!