Vintage sewing patterns began in the 1860s

Vintage patterns appeal on so many levels.  First the chance to recreate an old style, maybe something you remember your mom or grandmother wearing, or you just like dressing in the retro styles.  Maybe you are just a collector loving the vintage art work.  Or maybe you are a collage artist or scrapbooker who loves adding bits and pieces of the past to your work.

In any event,  over the last months I've followed some wonderful google trails and learned a great deal about commercial sewing patterns.

Patterns for the home sewer first appeared on the market in the 1860s.  Most women took apart old, worn out clothes to use as a pattern for a garment. With the birth of sized patterns sewing clothes, which all but the rich did, became much easier.

The birth of Butterick Patterns, thought to be the first, was inspired by the wife of Ebenezer Butterick, who commented to her tailor husband that it would be so much faster to make a garment if she had a sized pattern to follow.  He began to experiment and his first patterns were made from cardboard, but they were bulky and hard to ship, and he settled on tissue paper that was easy to fold and ship anywhere. 

Directions and cutting patterns did not begin to appear until the 1920s.  Up until that point, it was assumed that all women knew how to sew and just having a sized pattern to follow speeded up the process.