The dressmaker's patterns for the more than 50 different garments included in this volume first appeared in the 1890s in issues of the quarterly The Voice of Fashion. Most of the patterns are for stylish daywear for women, but there are house dresses and nightwear as well, along with a selection of suits and dresses for young boys and girls and several garments for men.
Reproduced from rare original issues of The Voice of Fashion, these patterns show that although most ladies' fashions of the 1890s were designed to conceal the body behind high necks, long sleeves, and full,...

At the turn of the century, ladies of privilege could easily afford their own dressmakers, and even middle-class housewives occasionally employed competent seamstresses. But many women did their own sewing, often relying on Dressmaking, Up to Date, a how-to book published by the Butterick Publishing Company. First published in 1905 and widely considered the first modern American sewing book, this extremely rare volume is published here complete and unabridged.
This Butterick manual provides clear and concise instructions for altering patterns, hand-sewing stitches, and creating...

Imported custom-made clothes were usually beyond the financial reach of the average middle-class American woman of a century ago; and store-bought garments were often of inferior quality. This left many women with the options of making their own clothes or hiring a seamstress.
While a number of economy-minded women did sew simple housedresses, and clothing for their children, many took favorite fashion plates to a dressmaker who would often consult patterns in a magazine such as The Voice of Fashion. This book, compiled by costume authority Kristina Harris, painstakingly reprints a...