A find!

Mail-order envelope, post-marked 1955. "Poncho, pedal-pushers, shorts, blouse"

Pattern drawing. My grandma labeled this pattern as containing "poncho, pedal pushers, shorts, blouse"

My mom let me paw through her small stash of old patterns today. Most of them are not really of interest to me—a lot of little girl (and adult) pioneer dresses and things like that. A number of them are Folkwear patterns, too—I hadn’t realized Folkwear was around that long ago (since at least one of those patterns is for a dress I wore when I was two).

But there was one children’s pattern she had gotten from my grandmother. It’s a mail-order pattern from “The Star Weekly Pattern Department”, post-marked 1955. My mother would have been 2 going on 3, her sister 11 months younger, perfect for this size 2 pattern. Of course, my children are far beyond a size 2, but I do have a couple of two-year-olds I’ve been sewing for, and I could always take a stab at grading it. That poncho is pretty cute.

My first un-printed pattern!

And look! Un-printed pattern paper!

I haven’t gone through to see if all pieces are there, but my grandmother and mother are both borderline hoarders, so I’m betting they are.

Sadly, she’s still hanging on to the button collection. Maybe she’ll let me take some pictures, though.

I am curious about one thing, though—whether size 2 patterns in the 50s were cut for diapers or not. It seems like there was a much bigger press to get your kids potty-trained back than as compared to now (infant potty-trainers aside). Mind you, if I was hand-washing all my kids’ dirty cloth diapers, I’d have had a lot more motivation to get them potty-trained early, too!

Pattern drawing and pieces