An update

I haven't done much this week. It's partly because of the heat and my still-in-recovery sewing mojo and partly because of this (my apologies for the terrible bathroom-mirror selfie):

I had dental surgery on Tuesday. It wasn't anything major. They just removed an inflammation at the root of a molar. It doesn't exactly hurt but it is kind of annoying and it feels like the healing conspires with the weather to sap the energy I'd like to have for doing things... It took me about a day to realize that fighting it wasn't going to help. So now, I'm just laying low and waiting for it to get better.

There are some small things I have been doing this week which I could show you. With more information about all of them to come later.

First of all, there has been some sewing. I started on Sunday on a new little thing to wear in hot weather. The fabric is blue/grey crepe left over from last summer's drapey jumpsuit. I thought it would be a quick little project, but I only finished it this morning. I'll model it when the swelling on my jaw has disappeared.

Then, I bought things. It has been a while since I bought patterns or pattern making books but this week, I bought both.

First up was this envelope containing two patterns from 1963. They are from the pattern catalogue Regina which was published four times a year (if I remember correctly). I own several issues of the magazine but had never seen the patterns for sale. This weekend, one seller put several of them on Marktplaats (Dutch Ebay). Most were too large for me and there was one in my size which I didn't like but I had to have this cute dress. The suit is a maternity pattern but it might be easy to adapt for normal wear. 
They were in the same envelope which I think means they were originally purchased at the same time. And which was why they were now sold as one lot. And they weren't expensive. They are unprinted patterns with sparse instructions. If you're interested, this link should take you to the remaining patterns on the seller's page.

Then, a couple of days later, I found this book.

The title translates as A Second Skin and it's a book on pattern making for lingerie. It is, in fact, the book M uses in her lingerie workshop which I took years ago. The writer is Margreet van Dam who is the designer behind the Merckwaerdigh lingerie patterns, which may be familiar to Dutch readers, or those of you who have bought lingerie supplies from Dutch webshops. It's not a thick book and it doesn't give you a ton of drafts for different kinds of lingerie. Rather, it focusses on how to draft well-fitting 'sloper' versions and giving you the tools to develop your own designs from those. I like that in a pattern making  book.
I had been looking for this book before but it seems that it has only had two print runs in 1998 so it's not easy to find. And now I have my own copy and in mint condition, no less.

And I've been 'shopping the stash', the pattern and magazine stash, that is. 

I decided now would be good time to get close and personal with the Gracieuses from the 1920's (I had already looked through the other half from the 1930's). They are old, strange, fragile and intriguing.

And I had another look at some pattern envelopes which had come from the same box and re-discovered (I thought I hadn't opened these before but a look at the original post about this vintage pattern haul taught me otherwise) what they are. Glorious dresses and suits from, I would guess, the late 1930's. There are no dates, no sizes and no more instructions than what you can see on the sheets of paper with the drawings but they look quite fabulous anyway.

I'm considering all the patterns I mentioned in this post for the Vintage Pattern Pledge (which I didn't forget about, although I didn't make anything for it yet), but more about that later...