We had to go over to Billericay yesterday on a bit of business which meant a good excuse to have a spot of lunch Wildwoods Restaurant. I've just spotted on their website that you can download a voucher for pizza, pasta or salad for £1 with the purchase of any main course - must bear that in mind in future. Though we did get a free coffee (for me) and dessert (for P) yesterday anyway as I had specifically asked for no anchovies in my Nicoise salad and, lo and behold, four of the horrible little devils were lurking at the bottom anyway. I was not happy. Having said all that, the food there is delicious and the prices are pretty reasonable too.
Anyhoo, I digress somewhat. A trip to Billericay is always a good excuse for a trawl of their charity shops. Despite there being six in the High Street (with Oxfam set to reopen in the next couple of weeks, apparently,) I only bought things in one of the shops - the local hospice one. There was a Cath Kidston shower cap - brand new with tags - 50p. That's destined for eBay. A rather nice winter-weight Ann Harvey top for me - a somewhat extortionate £4.00 but it will be very useful this winter.
They also had a large stack of vintage sewing patterns priced at 50p each. The drawings of the finished items are so much more beguiling than the more mundane photos that you get on sewing patterns these days.
The drawn models and clothes all look impossibly sleek and attractive on the envelopes - like illustrated Barbies or Stepford Wives. When I was a teenager making clothes from patterns like these I always ended up feeling most disgruntled that the finished item, however nice, never transformed me into the attractive female the drawing showed!!
Unusually, I even found a vintage men's sewing pattern for hip-hugger shorts or bell-bottom trousers. Even the men in the drawing remind me of Barbie's boyfriend Ken or maybe a slightly effeminate Action Man!
I love vintage sewing patterns! You are SO right about the illustrations. Your men's pattern kind of reminds me of the Brady Bunch guys. My mother, who made all my clothes growing up, used to get so annoyed with me, because I would always want to find fabric that closely matched the illustrations. I still have the pattern that she used to make my wedding gown. I've been thinking for awhile that I should frame it.
Posted by: kathleen | 10/15/2011 at 05:16 PM
Love those men!
Do you remember old mail order catalogue pictures where men would be modelling string vests or underpants? They were generally smoking a pipe and looking into the middle distance!
Posted by: Maureen | 10/15/2011 at 08:41 PM