Vintage Pattern Illustrators, I have a bone to pick with you!

First up, I love vintage pattern illustrations.  All the women look so glamorous and beautiful and slim, with perfect posture.  They look the way I want to look.

Look at the posture of the woman on the left - perfect!

And how impossibly slim is the woman on the right - but oh how glamorous!!!

But I have a bone to pick with you 1950s Pattern Illustrators - YOU LIE!!!  Don't get me wrong, I understand that these clothes won't instantly make me thinner, taller, and more glamorous, but I expect that the piece of clothing I make from the pattern you illustrated will at least look like the picture you drew!

Here is my case in point.  Just recently I decided to make a few blouses from a very simple 1950s pattern I had - this one:

I made View 1 (the bottom two illustrations).  Now you would think that from the illustration I would have a blouse with an elegantly low, sweeping neckline... NO!  To get the low sweeping neckline I had to cut it two inches lower AND make a new facing.  Now I wouldn't be so irritated if I hadn't already cut out the blouse four times from four different fabrics...sigh!  Not difficult to fix, but annoying.

Apart from this issue, the pattern makes a really lovely, simple and easy to make blouse:

 

See look how adorable this blouse is!  It was worth all the annoyance.

The low sweeping back is as per the pattern envelope - they just got the front wrong

(By the way, how cute does my butt look in these Bernie Dexter jeans!)

I have now made this blouse in cute apple fabric, as above (which I adore), a dark aqua and white polka dot fabric (which you havent seen yet but you will), lovely lilac fabric, and boring-but-useful black fabric.  And whilst sewing the same thing a few times is useful, its oh so boring - so bring on the next challenge I say!!!

Beccie
xxx