Dress Cutting
Instructions and Illustrations for Sewing 26 Vintage 1930s Fashions
by Margaret Ralston

CONDITION: new, softcover, crisp and glossy covers, 2008, 71 pages, unabridged, size: 5.5x8.5, published by Bramcost Publications

Originally published in 1932, this rare sewing book teaches the block method of pattern making. The book begins by explaining how to easily make a foundation draft pattern of a simple jumper. Using your own body measurements, you're taken through the pattern making process and then you learn how to use your customized foundation pattern to make:

• SKIRTS: flared skirt, costume skirt, flared skirt with hip yoke, costume skirt with hip yoke
• BLOUSES: simple blouse, blouse with shoulder straps and front fullness
• DRESSES: coat overall, dress with skirt flared from waist line, dress with skirt flared from hip line, dress with hip yoke and flared skirt, dress with godet skirt, dress with hip yoke and panels at back and front and circular side pieces, dress with flounces, dress with flared skirt 54 inches wide at hem
• SLEEVES: fitted sleeve with dart, fitted sleeve with gathers at elbow
• COLLARS AND CAPES: detachable polo collar, rever collar, roll collar with points, simple round collar with pointed fronts, bertha collars, cape with shoulder dart
• PLEATED SKIRTS: yoked skirt with front pleats, four-gored skirt with inserted pleats at seam
• GODETS: simple godets, godets with shaped top

Over 60 diagrams explain the pattern making process, with an extra chapter on adapting the block pattern. This book is complete with all of the details for creating early 1930s fashions including this era's distinctive fashion characteristics of looser-fitting tops and skirts that closely fit a woman's hips. Genuinely classy styles that can still be worn with grace and elegance today. Because the author was a Lecturer in Dressmaking with the National Society's Training College for Teachers of Domestic Subjects, you can be assured you are being taught by an expert in 1930s fashion sewing.

Please see images for a sampling of the book's content. Be sure to check our other auction listings for more vintage sewing books. 

Bramcost Publications is your publishing resource for vintage lifestyle books and patterns. Our books/patterns focus on the way our foremothers and forefathers lived, laughed and loved in their everyday lives. Beauty, fashion, millinery, entertaining and handicrafts are the building blocks of our book/pattern offerings with an emphasis on VINTAGE:

• makeup, hairstyling, beauty
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