No. 169 – Transfer Design for Basket Motifs. Blue. Price 25¢. These little basket motifs are lovely embroidered in delicate colors on finger tip towels, scarves, pincushions and other boudoir accessories. You’ll want to use them on children’s bibs, rompers and dresses, too, as well as on tray cloths. Two of the designs are for…
These monogram letters were published in two Sunday issues of the Oregon Daily Journal in 1917. The designer suggested that the letters would be suitable for for marking sheets, pillow cases, table cloths, buffet and dresser scarves, and that they should be padded heavily before working in satin stitch. There are no instructions — it’s just assumed the…
I have a thing for anthropomorphic utensils, dishes and pots and pans. There are more in earlier posts here and here. No. 771 – Transfer Design for Tea Towels. Blue. Price 25 cents. If you like variety and new ways of brightening up the daily tasks, don’t overlook these! Each motif has an amusing title, to be…
I was so pleased to see this pattern in my catalog, because I was able to identify 15 vintage quilt blocks I had purchased in this pattern. Later I found the original pattern, so for this McCall’s Monday I’m able to provide scans of the actual transfers. The pattern instructions from the envelope back are located…
In my catalog the illustrations at the top of the page with two scotties is not as detailed and the single illustration below, so I decided to scan the larger image and use Photoshop to try and duplicate the cape and pipe scottie. I hope they are clear enough to print and trace a pattern (click images to enlarge).
No. 1488 – Picture Motifs for Trimming (Yellow or Blue). Price 25¢ There are 13 different motifs in this pattern, about 3 inches high. These are smart on children’s wearables and ladies’ lingerie, rerquiring 2 threads of strand cotton in outline stitch, the short lines in single stitches.
McCall’s 1540 — Animal Motifs for Outlining, 1929
I’m always trying to figure out a way to duplicate these patterns from the very small images on the catalog pages. These Mexican motifs seemed like they would copy easier if they were in grayscale, so I changed them. Click on the images to enlarge.
I’ve added individual images of the appliquéd animals in #1101, just in case you’d like to try printing and tracing the patterns.
Peasant embroidery made a comeback in the 1970s, when I made several shirts with embroidered peasant designs. I even tried one very similar to the smocked Mexican style below. Argh! Why did I give all those clothes away! I wish I had the actual McCall’s transfers for these patterns, but, as a substitute, I do have some peasant…
I attended St. John’s Catholic School in Bartlesville, Oklahoma, through the eighth grade, and one of my favorite activities was collecting holy cards. The nuns (Ursulines, who all wore habits) would give out holy cards as rewards for all kinds of things, so, even though I was an average student, I had quite a collection. The…
Once again I’m going to attempt to mix it up a bit on the old blog (7 years and counting). There are several collections I want to share, and I’m just trying to figure out the best way to do it. First is a large group of newspaper embroidery patterns created by Betsy Dean and published…
Continuing with the French theme, here is an old Briggs transfer of French poodles incorporating lots of French knots.