Vintage Sewing Patterns and Neelde Packs

I'm looking forward to tomorrow when I get my stitches removed from my foot surgery!  Yahoo - can hardly wait! Lovely, huh?

It's almost a new year, but it's always fun to look back.

A few weeks ago,  a friend of mine from my guild invited me over to her house to look through some fabrics, notions, etc. that she obtained from helping an older friend (102 years old) move from a house to a residential care center.  My friend, like many of us quilters , has more than enough fabric and 'stuff' and did not want to collect any more.  There was a lot of Tulle, some velvets and other fabrics, cool vintage patterns and needle packs, and lots of rick-rack.  It was fun looking through everything.  I graciously accepted all of it and donated most of the fabrics to our new, fledging drama program at school for costumes.

I love the old, vintage patterns. I guess I remember similar patterns sitting on my mom's sewing machine, when I'd hang out with her as a little one, while she was sewing.  Here's a couple I really liked in particular.

There was no date on this one, but there was an NRA logo on the left lower part.  I found an interesting website, http://wesewretro.com/2011/11/how-to-date-vintage-mail-order-sewing-patterns/ that explained the NRA logo was not the National Rile Association, which was my first thought, but rather it stood for the National Recovery Administration which was  part of the New Deal under President Roosevelt. Patterns with this logo can be dated  to between 1933 and 1935.  Another interesting thing about this pattern, is that none of the pieces have any markings on them.  They are totally blank, so you need to guess which is the skirt front, back, etc.  All the instructions for cutting and sewing, few that there are, are printed on the back of the envelope.

This pattern is from 1931 and all the pieces are labeled and there is a separate instruction sheet.  Pretty snazzy jammies!

Below are some very cool needle packs, which it seemed were quite popular.

These two are from grocery stores. I found some offered on EBay that stated they were from the 1950's.  Both are from West Germany.

This beauty was in really good shape.  It was in a parchment paper envelope with a paper inside the booklet itself. It was made in Japan, probably in the 1950's, from what I can gather from visiting a variety of websites.  There are some of these that were made in Occupied Japan as well and are labeled as such.  Below is a picture of the inside as well.

Hope you enjoyed this little trip back in time.