A New Addition to My Sewing Library

I collect old sewing books. I particularly love old sewing books that show how to draft patterns.


I bought this book online last week. It’s a winner. it was published in 1930 and was written by Evalyn Shackelford. It’s published by the White Sewing Machine Company. Lots of sewing books from the era show various methods of making pockets  or using specialized sewing machine feet.
For me the value of a sewing book , like a cook book comes from the number of keeper ideas in the book.  this book has several.


This method of creating a strip of button holes is brilliant. I guess it made a whole lot of sense in the pre button holes made on the sewing machine era. I think that button hole strips like this, made with contrasting binding would look really terrific on a garment.
This book also shows a particularly clever way to create bias yardage that does not require a whole lot of cleverness on the part of the user.

The book has a curious feature, which is drafts for garments but featuring only text, no illustrations. I have to puzzle those out. When ever I see long strings of directions ( like knitting patterns), it always makes me sleepy.

But this book has something I have never seen before, a really sensible explanation about how to draft a sleeve pattern.


It made a whole lot of sense to me. I will have to try it out. No, not tonight. But soon.

You can click on the images to enlarge the pages so you can read them.