Awesome Auction Haul
This year I have been indulging in some online auctions. I always liked going to estate sales, but lately it seems they have all moved online, and I like that even better! I don’t have to wait until the auctioneer gets to the lot I am interested in; I can bid immediately and then watch my bid throughout the week of the auction. Sometimes I will have my heart set on a treasure and I will happily bid against someone else, but what I really like to do is bid on the lots that no one else wants.
In a recent auction, while other people were out-bidding each other for vintage table cloths and embroidered cup towels, I was happy to win a box of old patterns that was stored in the garage. When I got them home and started going through them, it was an even better find than I had hoped — over one hundred needlework pattern books, from 1917 to 1991! I surmised that the owner had packed them up when she moved from her old home to this one, and then never looked at them again.
Many of them were in their original envelopes, sent out from publications for the amazing postage of one cent!
I love how this one says, “May be opened for postal inspection if necessary.” What else is it going to say — “No postal inspection possible, be about your business, nothing to see here!”
Label from pattern envelope.
The envelopes were addressed to five different names at three different addresses. I was able to do a little quick research on Ancestry.com, and I can outline their story.
The family lived near Niagara Falls, New York. Minnie married Walter in 1917, and had a son, Louis. For a while, they lived with Walter’s brother William and his sister Ida. When Louis grew up, he married Olive. These three ladies, Minnie, Ida, and Olive, were frequent purchasers of patterns from such publishers as Woman’s Day, The American Weekly, Marian Martin, and Farm Journal. Sometimes the patterns were addressed to them as their married names — Mrs. Walter and Mrs. Louis — and sometimes to their own first names.
Louis and Olive also had a son, and after Louis’ death in the early 1980s, Olive moved here to the Houston area to be closer to her son and his family. And, as I had guessed, she took the collection of patterns with her. She had granddaughters, great-grandchildren, and even great-great-grandchildren! And when she passed away recently at the age of 100, she was still living in her own home.
I feel very lucky to have acquired this collection, and I thought I would share some of it here, decade by decade. I will keep a few items, but most of it I am intending to donate to the wonderful site Antique Pattern Library, which scans and shares these old needlework publications.
This is, I believe, the oldest item in the collection, dated 1917, by designer Virginia Snow:
Collingbourne’s Authority on Fine Arts, 1917
The inside cover, showing the Collingbourne Mills site.
Pattern for a hair receiver, 1917.
Pattern for a lettuce bag. This actually looks practical. It has to work better than a plastic bag.
At some point, some Collingbourne thread entered my collection!
This entire book is already on the Antique Pattern Library website as a PDF — you can click on the link, then scroll down until you see the cover image that I showed above: https://www.antiquepatternlibrary.org/html/warm/tatting.htm
This next book does not have a copyright date but it seems to be from the same era:
Original Crochet Edges
There are other books by designer Marie Antoinette Hees on the APL website, but I don’t think this one is there yet.
Can you imagine trying to read these directions?!!
Just the first four rows of directions for a pattern.
Update: per Susan’s request below, I am adding in the picture of the Spider and Fly pattern from the directions.
The spiders are in the webs, the flies are caught between and beneath the webs.
This next book also seems to be from the same era but it has lost its cover. It promotes Richardson’s cotton threads and silk yarns. You might look at this and think, would anyone actually spend so much time on something no one would ever see?
Corset cover crochet pattern, early 1900s.
Well, my great-grandmother did, and I still have her corset cover!
Crocheted corset cover, circa 1917.
Detail of the crocheting.
And here is a nightgown yoke pattern —
Pattern for crocheted yoke, circa 1917.
— and a very similar nightgown I got in a tub of linens at a different auction.
Vintage nightgown yoke.
Here is a PDF download link to another, very similar, edition from Richardson’s, from 1916, on Wikimedia Commons.
So far I have just sorted the patterns by decade. I can’t wait to go through them in more detail and see what treasures await!
Awesome Haul doesn’t even begin to cover it!! a Hair Receiver??? That is certainly stranger than a Corset Cover LOL You are so clever to have found this pattern trail. That pattern, the Spider and the Fly would be a challenge, could be done but is it like small animals or a doily? I found small animals, had to look it up of course haha
I added in the illustration to the post. I would love to know if anyone made that pattern, and what the designer was thinking when she created it! 🙂
I remember reading in the Little House books by Laura Ingalls Wilder, that she made a hair receiver for her mother for Christmas. perhaps they used the hair that fell out to make braids to add accents to their hairdos or add poofiness where desired in the hair style.
Who knew there was such a thing as a lettuce bag! I really think the pattern creators were reaching a bit for that one. And to think what people could be making with their crochet hooks instead of stroking their phones
That lettuce bag was even featured on the cover to draw people in to buy the book!
I wonder if it could be used like a salad spinner. And if people even put lettuce in the icebox back then, or maybe the spring house or root cellar out in the country. Another item to research!
What an incredible find. Thank you for sharing the history.
Thank you! I love to recirculate things from the past. 🙂
Yikes! The work involved in some of those things!
I know, even though I spend hours making things that are more decorative than necessary, I am amazed at how much effort they went to for just trims and edgings.
That is an impressive and fascinating haul. I have great admiration for the needle work that came before me. I’ve never seen a corset cover, nor a hair receiver. You have a kind and sharing heart, passing on most of the patterns to the Antique Pattern Library. I’m amazed at what you discover on Ancestry.
Thank you, Alys! And even though I had never heard of these ladies before buying their pattern collection, I was so happy when I found them on Ancestry. I was like, “Yes! There is my person!” and I was able to follow the tracks really quickly.
I searched the image and a seller on Etsy says 1915: https://www.etsy.com/listing/811296401/marie-antoinette-3-c1915-pdf-ebook
I’m not sure if that’s helpful, but you piqued my curiosity.
But what IS a hair receiver? I can only imagine it’s for a fake hairpiece or bun ‘doughnut’, because if it’s for hair out of your hairbrush, why wouldn’t you put that straight in the bin?
Oh, sweet, honest Kate, who would not try to mislead anyone with appearances..
Back in the day of the pompadour (1890s), those huge hair styles were not only the hair on one’s head! You saved all of your own brushed out hair and made a “rat” to tuck inside your pompadour. Or you could buy hair from some poor girl who had to sell hers. But of course your own is more acceptable. (I worked in a historic park set in 1896.)
I am surprised they were still doing that in 1917, but I guess the bob and the shingle were a few years away.
I’m… slightly grossed out, I must admit. But I suppose if you regard it as a resource it makes sense. I’m just sort of weirded out that it was such a common practice that an official container was needed!
I guess if you didn’t put your hair in the official container, someone else would come along and throw it in the bin! 🙂
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