Some of you might remember that I have a rather large collection of vintage sewing pattern flyers from companies like Butterick, Simplicity, McCall's and Vogue. They are great sources of information, good for researching patterns and styles from all sorts of eras.
Among my collection are several McCall Style News Booklets, some of which I have digitized in my Etsy shop. My favorite part about these is that in the late 1940's, many of them included little snippet articles with great sewing tips.
These little articles were usually a one page feature called "Adventures in Sewing" by Marian Corey, author of the 1951 "McCall's Complete Book of Dressmaking".
When I first started A Few Threads Loose, I shared a few of these in a series of posts and today I have finally found another to share!
Today's Adventures in Dressmaking lesson comes from McCall Style News from June, 1948.
The lesson in question shows you how to face and stabilize scallops. This is a handy thing to know how to do and can be used for scallop hems, scallop trim closures, and other uniquely shaped facings.
Here is a close-up:
The dress being mentioned is McCall 7294, worn by the lovely lady in the middle of the picture below. Should you ever be lucky enough to find this pattern, you'll have a hand tutorial for the hardest part!
For those of you who want to add some decorative scallops to your current sewing projects, I have a a most indispensable tool digitized to help you create your own, should you want one. This scallop ruler is so handy for adding scalloped edges to your sewing projects, and for re-drafting the scallops on a pattern that you've re-sized.
To make your own, you can just print it out on thick paper and cut, or print it on regular paper and paste it to thick construction paper.
Get the free Scallop Ruler PDF.
Check out these other great Adventures in Sewing posts:
