The Late Night Sewist

I spent the last weekend in Räpina – a tiny town 60 km south-east from Tartu. It is the town where my mother was born and my family still keeps her parents´ old house there. In summer it is very nice and this weekend they had some celebrations in the town, so we went on an excursion at the paper mill and also peeked into the music school and local history museum, which both occupy the old Räpina manor house. One photo of the building:

Although I like to show off my country, this blog is supposedly about sewing, so the real reason why I am talking about Räpina is that I discovered something really interesting at the local history museum. This:

I cannot really tell what this catalogue was used for – it doesn´t seem to have had any patterns included, maybe it was used for ordering them? It is beautifully illustrated and all the styles include suggested materials, the amount of fabric needed and also sketches of the pattern pieces. I wish they had the patterns at the museum as well, but they couldn´t even tell me how the catalogue got to there. Some of the models (I wish I had enough time to take proper photos of ALL of the, because the book was quite thick and also included models for children and teenagers):

Some of the outfits are so beautiful that I would be ready to try them out, although I have never used vintage patterns and they kind of make me anxious, as I know that they expect much more knowledge from the seamstress than the patterns of today. More photos in the next post!