Pattern Pool? (wanted to share: 1920s-1980s patterns)

By Lowkey. 22/03/11, 09:10 am

There is a barrel in my crawlspace, and it is full of plastic bags of patterns. I am not exactly clear on where they all came from.

One attests on age-browned paper "we hereby certify that this style is a current fashion" - a steal at 40 Australian cents, patented in 1919. Same bag, there's a hand-written receipt for a wedding dress, and a cut-out from a nineteen fifties newspaper of a happy bride.

There are literally hundreds of these patterns, some a little torn or untidy, but most of them in amazing condition. So far most of them are dresses, especially wedding and formal. I'm going through them looking for a uniform base, so while not immediately useful to me at this stage, I can imagine anybody dealing with dresses could find a use for them.

Which brings me to, is there, or should there be, some sort of pattern pool? Some way of sharing patterns? They're so expensive - if only they were still forty cents - to buy, but if you split the cost over even just the Wellington community...? I mean, we have a fecking massive seed collection with this barrel, and it feels sadistic not to offer them to people.

Even if I just say, hey, does anybody need a dress pattern, and are they willing to help me sort in return for it? If we sort them effectively we can offer them to other areas of NZ as well; they say what they want, we scan the covers to check, and we can mail them out for the price of a large envelope.

**Guest** Guest

Totally keen, but not till after Geddon.

By Highlander. 25/03/11, 03:28 pm

Hey, I know some slightly older (than me) women (historical re-creators and misc others) who are very interested in recreating older styles. They would love to help catalog these patterns for you. And they would be very good at it. Unfortunately they are in Feilding, Christchurch and Ashburton. So not very helpful at all. Still there is an offer from one of them that if you are stuck on what era or style some pattern is you can send her pictures and she will ID it for you. At the very least they would be interested in getting some patterns.

PS. I may be interested in some 80's male stuff, since some of my planned costumes date to then.

By Pura. 25/03/11, 05:50 pm

I LOVE CATALOGUING/SORTING THINGS |D

I actually have a bunch of patterns from the 70's and 80's that were also around the 40c-$1 mark, haha. My mum bought them and made her own clothes when she was a teenager xD.

And even if the patterns aren't big/small enough, you could always trace around them and change the size.

I'd suggest that anyone who does do pattern borrowing do the tracing anyway to preserve the original condition of them (:

... *ttly keen*

By vefalasiel. 26/03/11, 12:55 am

This is a good idea!

By Lowkey. 26/03/11, 06:02 am

@Highlander: I've gone through almost all of the patterns now (also found a fashion magazine clipping pinned to the obituary section of the newspaper, can't tell the year-- there is a veritable murder mystery in here) and I have I think two male patterns; some jackets, which I took out, and some button-up-shirts that I will have to dive back into the bags to find, if either of those are useful to you? The rest are all women's fashion, especially dresses and formal wear, some really elaborate wedding dresses included. As for sorting: if we take down the pattern's product codes when we sort, we could mail that list out to those friends of yours if there's some sort of back-catalogue or something they could check against to determine which they'd like to borrow? There are primarily Vogue, Simplicity and Butterick (sp?).

@Pura: Rule number two of Pattern Club, you don't use the original pattern?

But I gather that there's interest then and a post-Wellygeddon pattern-cataloguing-and-collating date would go down well? Any ideas for a way we could store them for people to have a look through? Once we set a date people can volunteer to bring their own collections or donate lever-arch files and cclearfile pockets or sit and sort by... style, I suppose? I think that sorting them into level-arch files by "long dress" "short dress" "formal" would be more useful to us than by era? Just would need a place to keep them-- U-ne-korn, how ever did that talk of a weekly sewing meet end up?

By Highlander. 26/03/11, 06:33 am

I guess for cosplayers who are using them for a base style is more useful.
For my friends it would be date.
They mentioned scanning the covers of any you can't ID and they could tell you what they are. But then as you have hundreds of them ....
Of course if one had a scanner and lots of gigs on ones internet they could be posted on a Microsoft Myspace site. But maybe just posting a list of, IDK, maybe titles and dates on a website would be an easy way for people around NZ to access them. Then you could always scan/photo the ones people inquire about.

I would be interested to at least know what the male patterns are?

By Lowkey. 26/03/11, 06:43 am

I have a scanner that could probably do the covers of two patterns at a time, but that would still take hours. Hosting a site or maintaining a thread here with just the pattern numbers wouldn't be that hard, though, and yeah, uploading scans on request.

I'll go looking for those two male patterns later.

By vefalasiel. 26/03/11, 01:04 pm

The site is about to be upgraded and modded. You might want to ask where it needs to go, but a thread for patterns would be perfect, then other people can add patterns as well, to share with everyone. I know I have a few gorgeous patterns other people might like.

By Pura. 26/03/11, 01:38 pm

Although if we're constantly posting patterns around the country, some might go missing ): (good grief I have bad luck with the post)

By Lowkey. 27/03/11, 11:15 am

There were some concerns re: never getting the patterns back after we sent them out, because of lazy folk or post-fails, but either we just accept this or we go through the painstaking effort of copying all the patterns out and sending the copies; might save the originals from being eroded, though.

By Grassangel. 08/04/11, 12:31 pm

Seeing as I inherited about a couple dozen patterns from the 60s through to 90s and an 80s? Vogue pattern book (you know, the big clunky ones that you browse through to choose a pattern) I'd be quite happy to share mine. Some have already been cut out, though since most of them are on the higher size range (14-20), I wouldn't think that matters too much...
So have a raised hand from me. (And I'd be perfectly willing to scan all the covers of mine, since there are only a couple dozen.)

There are also a whole bunch of stuffed toy patterns lingering in a cupboard somewhere... not sure if those patterns would be appreciated but I have them and they're made out of sturdy cardboard.

By Lowkey. 13/04/11, 12:39 pm

I would be stoked to see the stuffed animal patterns, actually. Do you happen to have a pig in amongst them?

Do we have any ideas about how or where to keep the collection?

By Lowkey. 27/04/11, 04:40 pm

Double post for update. Went through, filled approximately 400 clearfiles with patterns. They only require sorting & storage now. Once a storage option has been decided do we want to sort a way to add other people's collections in? They take up a stupid amount of room in lever-arch files, I discovered, so suggestions re: storing them in a tidy easy to access manner appreciated & welcomed.

Some of the illustrations and photographs on these, especially the 50s-60s Vogue patterns, are really neat, might scan them just for the hell of it and update a fyeahvintagevoguepatterns tumblr with them or something.

Spoiler:

By Pura. 27/04/11, 06:14 pm

Maybe one of those plastic containers would be good for storing them? That way it's also water proof. I can go through the patterns I have sometime this weekend maybe (if I'm not sewing, haha). I also make a few patterns and keep them, such as hoodies and such (:

By Lowkey. 18/05/11, 09:34 am

Took some photos of the 1950s patterns for Rengen since they were sorted out anyway http://lowkey.imgur.com/patterndump, just throwing them out there.

We should see about some real logistics.

By commandercandyfloss. 18/05/11, 10:58 am

//Drooool
Man, those patterns.

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