Butterick 6985

This is one of my favorite pattern envelope descriptions so far!

"Smart tailored shirts freshly cut with club collar, neat little buttons. (View A) Long, tailored sleeves, buttoned cuffs. (View B) Cool looking sleeveless version. (View C) Shoulder yoke (good for stripes), and short sleeves."

This pattern was published somewhere in the neighborhood of 1954, which means my grandmother was about 37 when she bought and made it. That also means it is fifty-six years old. That's so amazing! It also sold for 35 cents back then. Seems so cheap now!

This pattern is interesting to me because it contains riddles and relics. First, the riddles: my grandmother clearly cut out View C (the short-sleeved version), but she didn't cut out most of the pieces from View A--except the sleeve! What I'm piecing together from that is that she liked the yoke on View C, but wanted to give the garment long sleeves. I'm betting that's what she did--tailored it to her own tastes. There's also a little riddle in that the pattern piece for View B, front is entirely missing. Oh well--no one will be making that one! The third little riddle is that there's a random *other* pattern piece in the envelope--an armhole band for Simplicity 3438, a pattern I likely have somewhere but haven't encountered yet!

And the relics? Strangely, there are some torn bits of the Charleston newspaper in the envelope as well. All this certainly is not in line with my grandmother's typical tidiness with her patterns! But I *love* reading the old paper. Here are a few goodies from it:

*did you know in the mid-50s you could get 10 lbs of potatoes for 59 cents? You do now!

*an ad for Protex, "a true beauty soap;" the ad reads that it is oval-shaped, pure, mild, gentle to most sensitive skins, superb for daily bath and complexion care, and offers "dependable protection all day long." It's a deodorant soap. And it contains "Miracle MS 9." Wonder what that was.

*children's polo shirts, regularly-priced at a King Street department store for 79 cents each (!), were on sale 2 for $1.00. Girls' dresses "in solid colors and fancy patterns," regularly priced at $1.98 per dress, were on sale for 88 cents. A jacquard bedspread--a $4.98 value--was on sale for $2.99!

*there's part of a photo of a women's champion bowling team. Love that.

Viva la 1950s!