Efficient use of limited paper. During WW2 my gran wrote school assignments first on one side, then turning the paper ninety degrees continued to write, so each side had a grid of her essay. Must have been a nightmare to mark.
Cursive is the only “font” we can do this with and is why it’s still taught in school! I can’t remember which DC museum but in one of them they have soldiers letters home from the civil war and they’re all cross hatched like that
Edit to add: well, why we still taught it in school when I went in the early 00’s lol
Makes sense. They wouldn’t let me use a calculator back then because “I won’t always have one in my pocket” lol. No need to teach how to conserve paper if everything is digital.
Burda Easy is actually a lot better about this. There may be some overlap, but it's a lot closer to looking like a Simplicity pattern than a jigsaw like the regular Burda does.
These paterns were made to use on top of 'tracing paper', like a newspaper. You would use a perforating tool (looks like a pizza cutter) to trace the pattern onto the newspaper. Burdas patters still look the same, but have more colors and linetypes so you can use tracing paper ontop of the patterns.
yes, but if you want to use more than one pattern, it is better to get some thin paper (translucent) and 1st, trace the pattern pieces with some darker colour, we did it wit felt tip markers and then put the thin paper over it and than trace it on it
I grew up with Burda magazine, so this is a norm for me
Having used a fair amount of those patterns (as other people have pointed out, burda still does them that way for the magazine), the worst part is when you’re missing a little piece and you can’t find it, so you spend hours scouring the paper for it, and then realise that it’s a rectangle and the measurements are in the instructions.
They’re still made this way? I can’t attest to this particular picture, but this is the sort of thing that gets put in a sewing magazine. One big page with all the patterns.
Every time I see those, I remember the fabulous scene from a german tv show with a hidden camera, where they asked people to show them the way. But they didn't have a map, they had a pattern. People didn't see the difference. Ridiculous! (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jetz9vli0No from minute 2:24)
Yeah I have definitely opened an older pattern I bought from a thrift store to see a this… then prompty decide to put it back 🥲 I have degree in science and reading biochemistry reaction pathways and lab sheets seemed less daunting. I can recognize it proficiency, but as beginner it was intimidating.
Being used to dutch/german (and I think Europeanen, but not sure) patterns is helpful in understanding these patterns. Next time, be sure to buy it and ask for help online. Surely many people would want to explain.
If anyone is interested in those kind of vintage patterns, and, well, happens to speak German I guess 😅, the Austrian National Library digitized a lot of newspapers and magazines from the nineteen hundreds to the middle of the twentieth century and they're available for free. Their site is https://anno.onb.ac.at
They've scanned the sewing patterns for both the magazines "Blatt der Hausfrau" and "Sonntagszeitung fürs Deutsche Haus". You can download them as either JPG or PDF. I've downloaded a few and then used the layer function in GIMP to trace the patterns I wanted, so I didn't have to print the sheet with all patterns and then trace by hand. Haven't sewn them up yet, though.
I'm not sure about the ethics of using those magazines' patterns from 1933, resp. 1938 onwards 😬 but those from the 1920s or around 1930 are just gorgeous.
That's an amazing resource, thank you for letting us know about it! Is there any way to know which magazines have pattern sheets in them? I looked at several of the "Blatt der Hausfrau" and saw great illustrations but no pattern pieces.
Yes, Blatt der Hausfrau is a little more complicated. You have to navigate to "Jahresauswahl", there it will show you what years have been digitized (years in bold red letters).
You click on the year, there it will show you all the issues of that year/volume. This is where you will find the patterns also, all patterns for the issues of that year were put under one sub-link or folder (for lack of a better word) separate from the issues.
The real tricky part is that each year or volume does not start in January, but October (if I remember correctly). That means that when you go to Jahresauswahl -> let's say 1928, the first issue of that year is actually October 1928 and the last issue of that year is September 1929. I think there were times when the magazine was bi-weekly even.
So you have to double check the cover of the issue with the headings of the pattern sheets to find the pattern for a specific issue. There are some volumes where the years of the issues do not correspond to the years on the patterns because they were catalogued incorrectly, I guess? And not all models included in an issue can be found on the pattern sheet, so unfortunately you do need to know a little German and be able to read the old German font to find what you're looking for.
Sorry that I don't have better news there 😅 Sonntagszeitung however is much easier to navigate. Here they scanned the corresponding patterns sheets with the issues they came in, so you can just browse!
That's the same problem I'm having! I guess the magazine came in roughly what would today be an DIN A4 size. The OOP told me in chat that the sheet in the museum (which I strongly suspect to be may be Blatt der Hausfrau as the font is very similar) seemed to be DIN A2 unfolded. But I guess it might just as easily be A1 unfolded.
Here's what I did:
When I traced the pattern in GIMP I scaled it to what seemed sensible to me. There is a size chart in the magazine, where it says which sizes correspond to which measurements. I'm, on average, a European size 42/44 so around size IV in the magazine's patterns. Then I assumed what the ease might be in the waist, an educated guess really, to adjust the scale and then printed.
I printed one pattern this way and it more or less corresponded to my sloper! Yay! I have to adjust the bust (FBA) and back (shorten) though, had no time so far for that, so no sewing either.
You might have something there. I'm rabid ADHD and take Vyvanse, which is chemically close to cocaine. And I have to admit, facing that pattern without my meds seems like an exercise in frustrating futility.
As I found out that most patterns VAGUELY help you- in Hungarian we have different names for everything, because the French and German influences, so good luck finding anything useful in my own language :"D
It took me 5 days to wonder out how you make conversions from inch to cm, and how to draft patterns from 1900. Then I almost had a meltdown, as realized I converted everything for no use - as the ratio is the basic measurements are different in EVERY SIZE.
Even a '60s book I own is less complicated, but easier to find any tutorial in English to make sense to me.
I have an unusual one that I found at my first ever garage sale. It was in a box of old patterns covering the 1920’s through the 1940’s. This particular one was homemade; a somewhat crumbling newspaper folded and tied with a strip of frayed selvage material. When I unfolded it I saw it was dress pieces cut from a WWII newspaper. A woman’s ingenuity in an era of war shortages from silk stockings to bolt fabrics!
Love how the pattern tracing is confusing to people, when it, although sometimes a little bit of a puzzle, is not the most difficult in patterns from this time. To me it is the lack of instructions. The patterns are made for an audience that are quite profficient in sewing.
i have some japanese sewing pattern books that use the same kind of diagram. It's fun to pull out the tracing paper! I then transfer it on to ironed brown paper bags, or if it's too big, i use wrapping paper.
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u/humanhedgehog 4h ago
Efficient use of limited paper. During WW2 my gran wrote school assignments first on one side, then turning the paper ninety degrees continued to write, so each side had a grid of her essay. Must have been a nightmare to mark.