It's no secret that I have always wanted to try one of those make a woman's suit from an old man's suit. I find it so amusing that so much effort was place on reusing clothing, especially men's. In my Make and Mend booklet, there are pages dedicated to tearing apart an old man's suit to reuse for whatever you need.
There are some tight fitting layouts there!
What I find interesting is that these layouts assume that the woman is smaller than the man, and that stripes match up and a whole host of other things so conveniently forgotten when it comes to sewing clothes.
I also have this pattern that I found that is specifically made to reuse a man's old suit. The button holes even remain unchanged. I think that's cool. It makes me really want to find a suit that I can attempt this project with. One day I'll hit gold in the thrift store.
So thanks again, fellas for giving us the goodies we need.
I really love this whole idea. I believe the world and especially us in American, need to get rid of our Walmart mentality and catch hold of the Make and Mend mentality. I acquired an old sewing box and it had not one, but three darning mushrooms in it.
ReplyDeleteFabulous! I too am fascinated with the era. Check out this site for vintage videos on millinery and fashions (and other things): http://www.britishpathe.com/record.php?id=38179. I just posted this video on turbans. Turbans were very popular during WWII because they were practical for the working woman.
ReplyDeleteVery cool--thanks for posting the scans, this has gotten a lot of ideas rolling around for me.
ReplyDelete(I just started reading here a few days ago, btw--you post such interesting stuff!)