A Few Pretty Pages of The Home Economics Omnibus

 

This blog post has been reposted from our new blog at MrsDepew.com.

Behind every great seamstress is often a handful of really excellent sewing books. Men and women have long shared their hard-won knowledge of dressmaking and tailoring in beautiful, illustrated volumes like the one below.

If you collect or sew with vintage patterns, then you'll love seeing a few pretty pages of this 1940s book The Home Economics Omnibus by Harris and Huston.

Enjoy!

Sew Expensive... Millinery For Every Woman Sewing Book

Hello my dear readers! For you today I have another Sew Expensive moment brought to you by the internet and people with too much money!

For today's installment, I have a stunning book that recently sold for an equally stunning price!

This beautiful, and painfully rare book sold on Ebay recently for a sum that made me quite literally squeal. I scared the hell out of the dog.

This original Millinery for Every Woman by Georgina Kerr Kaye sold for an incredible $587.90 (that's 427 € or 354 £!).

Why would this amazing little tome go for so much, you might ask? Because it's full of hat patterns and very rare millinery knowledge that is slowly dying out. Very few people make their own hats any more compared to the average woman of the 18th century who often knew how to make just about anything. That sort of knowledge is rather scarce these days so a book like this would find a very welcome home among those who wish to preserve that kind of knowledge.

If you're interested in making your own hats, there isn't a lot of info readily available and books like these are not easy to find!
But don't fret, my dears, there is an alternative to spending half your rent on antique millinery books! There are several re-prints of this book currently available on Amazon for as little as $25.

In other news, Happy New Year! Another year has gone by and I find that as a whole, I'm just as content with life as I have been for the last 7 or 8 years.  So no resolutions for me, just happy business as usual.
How about you? Any grand resolutions you hope to keep?

Book Review: Embroidered Effects

As you all know,  I love sewing my own lingerie and I love using vintage patterns to do it. However, some of my favorite patterns have also had embroidery transfers included to personalize and beautify said lingerie. This always frustrated me, that I didn't know how to embroider and couldn't use the pattern to it's full potential. Recently though, I vowed to myself that I would keep learning new things and new skills on a regular basis in order to avoid felling like a stagnant pool of used up creative juices. Yuck. So my first step, obviously, had to be learning to embroider. I know, not only would I be fulfilling the sacred vow that I had sworn on the head of Vinny the cat, but I would also be upping my game in the lingerie sewing sphere!

Image courtesy of Modcloth.com

I jumped online and almost immediately, I found Embroidered Effects, by the marvelously talented and quite humorous Jenny Hart of Sublime Stitching. (Seriously, check out the website, you'll be hooked in seconds.)

Now let me tell you how much I love this book. It went straight to the pile of Necessary Stuff on my nightstand (right along with the trashy romance novel, the medicine for my chronic nerve pain, and Moo the stuffed penguin... three things I can't live without).
The first night I tried the patterns and stitch tutorials included with the book, I ended up stitching long after my husband had fallen asleep because I couldn't put down my needle! I found out that embroidery was fun, just like Jenny Hart promised it would be, and I didn't want to stop. Ever. Not to mention, the slow, careful stitching helped relax my bad arm and actually soothed the pain I usually go to bed with each night. Well, there you have it. The cure is embroidery!
And look! Lookit what I made!

Day 1

I did this using a simple back-stitch (something my Grandma actually taught me for hand sewing) and French knots. And then I took the half dozen or so stitches that I learned after that and I started fooling around with monograms. I've always wanted to add cute little monograms to things like French knickers and now I can. Here was the second thing I ever embroidered... a monogram design that I found online.

Day 2

I made this using a satin stitch, back stitch, split stitch and French knots, all learned from Embroidered Effects, and when I finished that, I thought "This book just taught me how to do everything!"
So... this is the part where I tell you that I escalate things. Quickly. I'm an escalator.
Naturally then, my third embroidery project couldn't be something simple. I decided that since, in my mind it was just like drawing, I would just embroider something that had already been drawn. No big deal.
I had just the drawing in mind, a fashion sketch by Robert Piguet from 1951.

Robert Piguet, 1951 -  From Fashion Illustration 1930-1970.

So I traced it out with a transfer pencil and one bright Saturday afternoon, I curled up on a chaise in the sun and embroidered this:

Day 3

Soooo.... long story short, here is why you might like this book better than others.
Tone: Miss Hart didn't write a textbook. The book is friendly, putting you at ease and welcoming you into the world of embroidery like a great hostess invites you in for some tea and gossip. The author's love of embroidery is apparent and even before you pick up your needle and try your first stitch, you already love it too.

Project with included pattern from Embroidered Effects by Jenny hart.

Not to mention, this book is BEAUTIFUL. It's full of delicious illustrations that capture the art of embroidery and Miss Hart's own unique, "This ain't your Grandma's embroidery" attitude. My favorite aspect is the slight vintage flair infused in the accompanying patterns. You get a slight whiff of pin-up combined with an air of 1950's motorcycle gang meets June cleaver in a thong. If that's a thing. And I like it.

You can find Embroidered Effects and other books at SublimeStitching.com along with patterns, tools, starter kits and everything else you need to get started!
I'm pretty sure that if you give embroidery a try, you'll be as hooked as I am.

Have a great weekend!

xoxo

Anna

Is a seamstress only as good as her library?

I have some great sewing books in my collection. Some REALLY great ones. I'd say that about 50% of what I've learned about sewing in the last 5 years is from those books. And the other 50% is a mix of the internet and calling my mother.
I have 18 sewing books now, and counting. Most are vintage, and some are new, which reflects what I sew. I love getting stuck on a vintage pattern (What the hell does this thing mean by telling me to 'Fell a seam'?) and running over to the bookshelf and pouring through the many appendices until I find the right instructions.

Here are a few that I highly recommend if you can find them:

McCall's Complete Book of Dressmaking by Marian Corey, 1951.
You might recall me mentioning her as the author of Adventures in Sewing, which was published regularly in McCall Fashion News booklets. I love this book just because of the pictures. Swoon.

 Art of Dressmaking - Butterick, 1927.
There are several being sold on Etsy at the moment!
It's one of the few vintage sewing books that I have that mentions lingerie sewing and plackets for underwear and there are lovely photos that illustrate how to do everything!

 

The Vogue Sewing Book -Vogue Patterns New York, 1970-1978, all editions have been good.
There are so many clear illustrations and instructions that it's almost like having an experienced seamstress in the room.

Mail Call

Living at a faraway post here in Norway as military can make getting your mail a complicated task to say the least. The military does whatever they can to save us money and difficulty when we're overseas and APO boxes are one of those many boons I could not do without. Our mail goes to New York where the cost of shipping it overseas is picked up by the Air Force, then our mail jumps through a series of hoops before finally ending up at our base post office.

Photo from http://ozebook.com/wordpress/?p=69

So naturally Mike picks up the mail every day while he's at work and brings it home every evening. This is my favorite time of day. Not only does my handsome husband come home, he comes bringing packages of loot!
I get the greatest stuff in the mail. Between my endless hunt for the perfect pattern online, my many purchases of fabric from various sources, and the EPIC care packages my mom sends full of vintage buttons, trims, silks, dresses, and accessories, Mail Call, as I like to think of it, is fan-freaking-tastic at our house.
So today I'll share what I got in the mail.

Today's loot was great. From ebay I acquired "Art of Dressmaking" published by Butterick in 1927.

Some book love...

So in an effort to have a more organized sewing room, I'm attempting to create a swatch catalog of my massive fabric collection. Stitch Magazine has thoughtfully provided a free pdf download to a lovely little printout that has everything you need to create your own stash catalog!

Image courtesy of interweavestitch.com

Now I'm not sure about the rules of sharing a pdf that belongs to another web site and I had to create a free account with them to get access to the download so I'm going to leave that up to you guys. However, I signed up for their newsletter and, though most of it seems to be about quilting (not really my thing) there are some great sewing tips and other things that I've gotten out of it.