This package was in one of the boxes of fabric I bought at the auction a few weeks ago.
The post mark is from 1967 and it seems to be a mail order package for a pre-cut, ready to sew dress. Here’s what’s inside.
And a close up of the illustration so you can see the 2 variations. I like the collar on the view on the right.
The fabric looks like a fairly light blue sort of denim and everything is there to make a dress – fabric pieces, instructions, zip, button, even the fabric for the matching headscarf. (In the next picture, most of the pieces are wrong side up, the right side of the fabric is the darker blue)
I was really excited to find it because I had already found lots of instruction sheets for similar kits and was wondering what they were.
The blue dress is for bust size 40 but I’ve never used a pattern from the 60s so don’t know how big the finished dress would be. I guess it would be quite big on me but need to measure the fabric pieces to get an idea of the finished dimensions.
Right after I discovered this kit, I saw a post by Sarah of Color Kitten on Sew Retro. Sarah has a cute vintage skirt kit which looks like a similar sort of thing. On her blog post, Sarah received lots of advice on whether to sew up the kit or preserve it. So I need to decide if I should make up this dress or tuck it away for someone else to discover in a few more decades. Would I wear it? Could I pull off the look? Sixties style or forty year old frump?
UPDATE: Wowsers. I just reread this a couple of days after posting and realised I’ve written exactly as I’d write a technical report at work. How completely dull. Sorry folks, must try harder next time.
[...] things that make you look again and think “Hey, that’s clever”. When I found the 1960s dress kit (which sadly didn’t work out) I began wondering if such things (i.e. mail order clothing [...]