Friday I finally found my motivation and decided to do something with the ever growing pile of fabric in my closet! I chose a pattern from a German sewing magazine from 1936 called Praktische Damen und Kinder Mode. These old German and Swiss fashion journals are my absolute favorite. They usually show about 30 different fashions and include a massive pattern sheet for all of them, in all different sizes. If you are a vintage sewer, you need a few of these! I haven’t found anything similar that includes patterns from any other country, but hopefully they’re out there 🙂 The only drawback is that the instructions are minimal, so if you are a new sewer, some of the complicated patterns can be difficult to navigate. To use these, you need tracing paper, and just need to find the numbers specified and trace out the lines indicated for those pattern pieces you need. Once you get the hang of it, it’s pretty simple. I finished this whole thing in one weekend, and I love it so much I might have to make another one!
the blouse
the magazine
the pieces
instructions
First, trace out the pieces you need, in this case # 1-7
then lay out the pattern pieces on your fabric. This picture shows the actual color of the fabric
Sew the front and back pieces together, leaving enough unsewn in the back to fit your head through. Then attach the sleeves leaving the top part open (the yoke fits into these places). Afterwards, lay the yoke bits over top. you should have extending triangle areas that you need to set into the sleeves.
getting the yoke on right is easier if you put the blouse on and pin it while you're wearing it.
then bind the sleeves up with a ribbon, pleating it to fit into the ribbon. I left the ends longer so the ties hang down, but you could also just have it as a normal band (with none hanging down)
I used a vintage button and made a tie to close the back at the neck, but you could just as easily use a zipper or a button and buttonhole. I then added a small zipper on the side for fit.
a finished sleeve. you can also see how light the cotton I used is. You really need a flowing fabric for this blouse to work.
Finished! The waist ended up being too short, so I added another strip at the bottom. The other pictures made the fabric look grey, this is the actual color.
and voila! It really is the perfect project for a cold, rainy weekend. I can’t wait to wear it!
Young Jen in Spats 
This is awesome looking. I’ve never seen a pattern sheet with so many pattern pieces on it before. Where did you find the magazine with the pattern still? I’ve picked up a few Deliniators but they were missing any patterns that were supposedly in there. And the final blouse looks really nice. Really cool.
The back side has even more of them 🙂
That’s so pretty, I love that fabric pattern and color. I’m so jealous, I’m still not finding any ‘with free pattern’ vintage magazines that still have the patterns in them!
Faith, I may regret making this public 🙂 Go on German ebay, and search for Schnittmusterbogen, then narrow the search to the Kleidung nach Jahrzehnten or Antiquarische Bücher categories and you should find plenty! Just promise you won’t steal my 30’s ones away from me, LOL! As far as I know, only Germany, Austria, and Switzerland published these, as these are the only ones I’ve found with pattern sheets in them. The descriptions will be in German, but what you should be looking for is “mit Original-schnittmusterbogen” or something like that. “Schnittmusterbogen fehlt” means the pattern sheet is gone. Most of them should ship internationally. Good luck!