Recently I was alerted to a garage sale group on Gumtree by a member of a Facebook sewing group.
It was listed as having some vintage patterns for sale and as luck would have it the location tied in with my family's plans for the weekend :)
Living in Perth - one of the most isolated cities on earth- vintage pattern finds tend to be few and far between these days, especially since the resurgence in popularity of sewing and vintage sewing (think Mad Men style outfits) in particular. Over many years of op-shopping notable vintage pattern finds have been few and far between. Usually they are way to small for me to use without major resizing and very rarely have been printed before the late 1960s. Even then anything of that era or earlier can command quite a price here, as now they are seen as "collectable". So paying $5 or $10 for a complete pattern, or $1-$2 for just the envelope (yes I paid that recently because I liked the illustration) is not unheard of.
Therefore you can imagine how amazed I was when I saw hundreds and hundreds of patterns for sale, many vintage and in my size (or very close) for 50 cents each. I brought 60 vintage patterns for $30.00 -pattern stash building heaven!!!'
Over the next few weeks I'll showcase some of the patterns I picked up. In the meantime here's a teaser, a lovely 1950s (I think?) apron mail order pattern, complete with original mailing envelope:
Happy Sewing Everyone!
Kate :)
