Look what I've got! - The tin and bulk of fabric edition

For some reason, I don't remember anymore what, I started scouring Aukro, the Czech version of eBay. And I splurged on some things.

The first thing was this tin box:

I'm always short on pretty storage options, and this fits so nicely with other things in our house:

(The colours are more true on this photo.)

It houses my fusible interfacings now. Well, those I've managed to unearth so far. That is enough of an explanation of why it houses them.


Another thing was - wait for it - 15 meters of lining fabric.

 
Well, I did not bother measuring it and trust the seller; it's quite the bulk. For about 26 CZK per metre. That's like a dollar per metre, I believe. Nice, sturdy, reversible lining fabric, most probably acetate (burn test proved it not to be a hideous melting kind of artificial, but the ash is dark, so it's probably not rayon) - certainly much better than those various odds and ends of dubious fibre content that made up my fabric stash up till now. You see, I was very short on lining fabrics as well. Very short. I think this purchase can be excused in my attempts to use up stash and not add to it, because I have fabrics in my stash that I could not use without lining. Like that burgundy red for a jacket.

The warp here is black or very dark blue and the weft is a gorgeous bronze colour, resulting in a changeable quality on both sides. Admittedly, the bronze colour is not exactly my colour, or my family's colour. But the other side has just that little tinge of gold that works for me (think overcast grey, grey skies with golden rays pouring through - those are my best colours) and will do very nicely.
And I have something else in mind for two special fabric remnants... but that's a vague idea that has to wait.

It's pretty enough to be tempting as a fashion fabric, but it does not behave properly for that (the frou-frou is somewhat wind-breaker-y, if you know what I mean). I know better now, and am looking forward to pretty insides.


Other news: Now that Flickr has made their free space much larger than it used to be, I'm gradually putting up those German pattern magazines - the first one is here. Rajče, the Czech site I'm using, is a fine one, but it resizes the pictures, and I don't want that.

Illustrierte Wäsche- und Handarbeitszeitung, 1941

There are much more 1940s magazines in the stack I borrowed from my aunt, but most of them are larger than our scanner. This one mostly fit; even then, some of the pictures are put together from two scans.

This one is also cute. (Most of the 1940s German magazines from Germany have rather boring, war-time clothes.) And it's also one of the few with an intact pattern sheet.






So yes, I may be able to sew some of these.


I'm not going to make this, though. The magazine has several such projects, which pretend to be practical, and seem to me to be actually not. How many spools of thread can you put on that thing? It might have worked in the 1940s. It would not work for me now; I have 3+ boxes of thread.

But the wooden spools are lovely. I got several such old spools from my grandma. Currently, they're still storing the original threads; when that is gone, I look forward to using them similarly to Anna.

I don't know how old these are, but they could easily be from the 1940s! (Although they're probably not.)

An Austrian 1932 magazine and pattern catalogue

Some (a long...) time ago, I borrowed a stack of 1930s and 40s German and Austrian magazines from my aunt, with the intention of scanning them and tracing the pattern sheets that survived the flow of time. The tracing is tiresome and the scanning complicated, because most of them are bigger than our scanner - so I still have them. This is one of them.

"Die schöne Wienerin", from the year 1932 - it does not state the month, but this illustration suggests it was in spring.

It's a women's magazine and a pattern catalogue. It states on the cover that there also was a free pattern sheet attached, but that's gone now (sadly). ETA: I've now found out that the Czech magazine Nové pařížské módy used the same plates - and is freely available on the site of Moravská zemská knihovna, pattern supplement included. (They date that one to 1930-31, though. Weird.)

I won't comment these pictures... I don't have the time and patience to translate from German now. Just sit back and enjoy.

The cowl-necked blouse in the middle is available on the Czech pattern sheet.

The puffed-sleeved nightgown on the left is available in the Czech pattern sheet.

The 1950s knitting magazine

I promised to write more about the 1950s knitting magazine in a separate post. So here you go.

There is no date of publication stated anywhere in the magazine, but father helped me date it - thanks to the price printed on the cover, 30 Kčs. He said it must have been before a currency reform that took place in 1953. And because it apparently already comes from the time after the communists took power (national factories and such things), it's most probably from between 1949-1953.

My original estimation was based on a stray mail order form inserted inside, dated December 1950 - but it is, as I said, a stray paper - from a different company.

Still, it's probably from around the same time, because what would it be doing there otherwise? It doesn't seem like for a long time anybody cared about what's in the magazine - not even in the shop where I bought it. As I mentioned in the first post, there was also a separate knitting pattern (again, from a different company) inserted. So I got more worth for my money. :-)

There are many pretty things inside the magazine... It's much better than most newer communist era craft magazines I've seen so far - the 70s and 80s were already quite boring, with an abundance of drab-coloured folk inspired embroidery and shapeless clothes... Here, what I stated in the first post is evident - there were still people from the old times responsible for this, and did their best.

Don't you love these pictures?

I love these sports sweaters - even more, those hats. Rather dwarwish.

This man was "cool" long before "cool" was defined - at least in this neck of the woods.

But I like this sweater much more:

And these adorable hats:

(That separate pattern that was inside the magazine is actually more or less identical to the first hat here.)

And one delightful crocheted thing for a good measure: