How to find an old (1970's) women's sewing pattern?

Asked by BarnacleBill (16138

) March 12th, 2011

My sister’s birthday is coming up, and I would love to find a pattern for an outfit that she made in high school that she has been looking for for several years. I can remember when she made the outfit, and what it looks like. (She lent it to a friend, who lent it to a friend, and it never came back.)

She made it between 1971 and 1975, because she was in high school. The outfit was featured in a magazine, either Seventeen, Ladies Home Journal, or one of those women’s magazines. She thinks the outfit was featured in an article about Susan Ford, Gerald Ford’s daughter. She made the outfit exactly as it appeared.

Description: Black and white gingham skirt and matching top. The skirt had a border of cross-stitched hot pink and red roses around the bottom. The top was sleeveless, and had a turtle neck collar and zipped up the back. The sleeve was cut in to the shoulder, looking like a halter top. It took her forever to embroider the skirt, but when she finished the outfit, it looked exactly like the one in the magazine. It was pretty amazing.

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3 Answers

There are websites that sell patterns from all sorts of eras. I found a couple here that have patterns from the 1970s. I just put in Simplicity Patterns 1970s and these (and a number more came up). If you can do a search for different brand names (or try to sneakily find out from your sister what brand it was) you could perhaps do a Google search and even call some of the people running these sites. They are likely to have really good knowledge of different patterns and especially popular ones.

Good luck with your quest. Don’t overlook ebay too. Might mean a bit of trawling but you might just get lucky.

http://www.oldpatterns.com/simplicity70.html

http://www.oldpatterns.com/coats70.html

Bellatrix (21317

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EBay is a good place to look.

JmacOroni (3293

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I just saw some the other day, where was I? Um…..it had to have been a thrift store. Also Vogue still sells them in their catalog books. But of course, the Internet has them. I’ve seen a lot of them using Google search.

Cinamingrl (82

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