After my success with my last “Shabby Chic”, fully convertible pinafore, this next one is in the real deal vintage 40’s style as a one piece dress. This pinafore dress has an amazing attention to detail and the way it was designed includes a new-to-me shoulder seam method. This is also my first time making an Anne Adams brand pattern…and I love the fit, style lines and proportions. It might not receive as much out-and-about wear as my last pinafore, but I think this was the most perfect use for a longtime orphan (material not yet matched to a pattern) in my fabric collection, a quaint feedsack printed seersucker I’d been holding onto for years. Yay – one more bolt of fabric is out from my stash and able to be enjoyed.
If you’re confused about what a pinafore is, please see my preceding introductory blog post on “The Summer of the Pinafore”, the inspiration behind my recent sewing. This post’s pinafore is not like the multi-use floral one with a modern flair that I blogged about last, so here I will further explore the colors, fabrics, and prints used in the history of pinafores. It’s weird to see how pinafores seem to reflect deeply subtle societal changes in the times around them. A garment for the basic needs of women and children has a surprisingly very rich history.
THE FACTS:
FABRIC: a 100% cotton print with a slight seersucker texture
PATTERN: Anne Adams #4988, circa 1943
NOTIONS: I used everything from on hand in my
existing stash – thread, bias tape, interfacing scraps, a card of vintage baby rick-rack, a vintage metal zipper, and three vintage buttons from hubby’s Grandmother.
TIME TO COMPLETE: Making this pinafore took me about 15 to 20 hours and it was finished on July 22, 2017.
THE INSIDES: All clean, as they are all bias bound. The waistband is smoothly finished by an extra facing piece I added
TOTAL COST: This unusual vintage specialty fabric was bought at Wal-Mart…of all places…as a “value print calico”. I still had the receipt with the fabric. 2 ½ yards was bought back in March 2013 for $6.88. What a stinkin’ great deal!
This is one of the very few patterns in my stash that had a very deep set personal, self-imposed “duty” to sew myself a version. Why? On a practical level, the pattern and its instruction sheet are absolutely crumbling to dust so I felt an urgency to make a dress from this design before the condition of the paper turned dire. There is a better reason, though. There is room to believe the original owner/recipient might be a distant relative we never heard of before! You see, one weekend, on my occasional visit to our city’s antique and vintage shops, I came across a shocking and exciting find of a 1940’s pattern, whose old postal recipient had the exact same last name as ours. Her address was in our same city, quite nearby, too. Our last name is on the more unusual side, and it’s in the traditional German spelling, so the family has always said that anyone else with this same name in town was probably some relative, however distant. Finding this pattern make the family dig into our genealogy again. To make things even more special, the year of 1943 was written on the instruction sheet…very much appreciated because mail order patterns are seldom able to be so specifically dated. Everything about this pattern was a touching, exciting, special opportunity…probably something that will not happen again and a neat happenstance to find in the first place.
Whether rightly or wrongly, I somehow was surprised at the amount of detail and well thought out design to this pattern, as if I thought mail order patterns were second rate. I feel bad now because this was a killer pattern not in a standout or “chic” fashion way, but by having a great fit of both pattern pieces and finished dress, nice instruction sheet, and impressive design lines. I am probably so used to primarily using patterns from the four major brands in every era (Simplicity, McCall, Butterick, Vogue), as well as the coveted yet well-known defunct brands (DuBarry, Hollywood, and Pictorial Review, to name a few). I realized from using this Anne Adams pattern that I should give more mail order patterns a better appreciation.
Anne Adams from my knowledge is an all-American pattern company (yay!) which lasted from the 1930s to the 1960s and were the last to use unprinted, pre-cut tissue. Her company’s patterns were available through the local newspapers along with related Marian Martin brand. Apparently, Anne Adams designs were from uncredited designers who tailored to real women, offering larger sizes and even customizing designs for local fashions trends (so the city girl and country girl could have their own style)! Many Anne Adams patterns do have scalloping as part of their designs, with a penchant for trimming, so I suppose this pinafore is a semi-classic design for this company! My pinafore does strike me as a very country girl look for a city woman to purchase…I can tell the pattern pieces had been used before so I’m really curious if it was the original owner – our mystery distant relative – that made this for herself!
This was unexpectedly challenging and sort of difficult in the way of being quite detailed and having many steps to make. This step had to be done before this step…oh and don’t forget the trim…was the sum of my sewing progress in repetition. I really needed those crumbly, falling apart instructions and the fact that there were substantial parts missing 
made sewing a bit more challenging. Not meaning to brag, but for many garments I’ve been making recently, I have not needed the instruction sheets so having a project be a surprise challenge was a good change.
There is really a lot going on with this dress! Most of it is in the front, and although the back is rather basic, it does have first-rate seaming and shaping. I enjoy how the vintage metal zipper I used in the side really makes my pinafore strike me as close to an authentic vintage piece. Asymmetric scalloped bodice closing, tapered rectangular neckline, set-in waistband, center front skirt box pleat, and curved, set-in-style pockets are all awesome, but I like the sleeve ruffles the best.
The shoulder seam is defined by the spot where the gathers are brought in and stitched down. The smart part is that they are set into the main body of the dress! The horizontal shoulder seams, which run from the neck outward, are divided into two separate seams – the true shoulder and the over-the-shoulder ruffles – by the vertical opening for the gathering to work. This did make the bodice one big piece tow work with! I had to iron the finished ruffles and stitch the seam allowance flat (facing towards the neckline) so that the over-the-shoulder ruffles don’t flare upward obnoxiously…what they want to do! They might be over the top but these ruffles are so fun to wear and were interesting to sew – not to forget mentioning extremely comfy, too. The openness of the sleeves and the airy breeziness of the ruffles make this so very easy to move around in, stay cool, and have all the freedom to perform all the necessary or menial tasks a pinafore is meant to be worn doing.
I’m not one for rick-rack on my clothes, by I’m actually surprisingly won over to the benefit a card of the vintage baby size notion added along the edges here! As I said before, the quainter a pinafore is made, the more it is jazzed up with novelty embellishment, it only makes it look all the better. Without the rick-rack, anyway, I do believe much of the seaming details would be sadly lost. I just made it – I only had about 4 inches leftover of the rick-rack after I was done adding it along the pockets and neckline edges. Whew! I couldn’t cut it any closer if I had pre-measured how much I would’ve needed. I really think this project was meant to be!
The slight puckering to this seersucker makes it simply a dream to wear and work in. Reproduction aside, this is (to my knowledge) the true vintage way of doing seersucker – not the giant bubbled, ugly print stuff I see offered nowadays. It is so cooling the way it keeps an airy distance from off of the skin. It holds a good shape without being too stiff or getting droopy yet stays soft and comfortable due to the brushed all-cotton content. Fabric like this is a goldmine to come across these days and that’s a shame. I’m glad I resisted the urge to hoard this because now I understand why its material gold…it’s not just because it’s rare, it also great to wear!
I suppose I went with a rather traditional color tone for pinafores by making mine in a primarily baby blue print. You must remember, that in the 1940s blue was still considered a woman’s color and shades of red, including pink were a man’s tone. The modern opposite methodology of thinking was not around as of yet (read a further explanation of the gender significance of pink and blue in this past post of mine). Even Hollywood used primarily blue pinafores to costume their best actresses in the decade of the 1940’s, the era I see the most pinafores on the Silver Screens. Perhaps the most famous of the blue pinafores has to be the gingham bib-style one worn by Dorothy in the 1939 movie “The Wizard of Oz” (of which I made my own version for a past Halloween).
Also, the popular 1945 musical movie “State Fair” abounds in blue toned peasant looks, aprons, and pinafores. The movie’s main actress Jeanne Crain wore at least two shoulder ruffled, baby blue pinafores that were really more like jumpers than my own dress version. For another obnoxious shoulder ruffled Hollywood pinny in a more basic color of white, I’d like to highlight one that Betty Grable and her associates wore in the 1944 movie “Pin up Girl”. There’s even rick rack along the edges just like my own and Ms. Grable still looks hot!
Traditionally the pinafore was worn for many years in primarily white and it wasn’t until the 20th century that they became something worn by anyone other than children in prints and colors. Going upon the concepts of Rousseau that children are their own entities with their “duty” being to learn, play, and be healthy, late nineteenth century girls, young women and sometimes small boys were dressed in pinafores made of plain, mostly white fabric, so they could have comfortable option to protect their clothing when they did their “work”. With this concept, pinafore from that time were a sort of “uniform” for doing what children did best. Besides, at that time modern methods of washing were not available and a basic white pinafore would’ve been relatively easy to wash, bleach and starch back to normal if dirtied.
In the 20th century, this had changed to the pinny becoming part of the clothes it was originally meant to protect. In 1946, Life magazine noted this shift in an article on children’s dress, noting that “children used to wear washable pinafores over un-washable dresses. Now a pinafore becomes a washable dress.” (Quote from the FDIM Museum blog here.) Beginning somewhere after WWI (circa 1920s) novelty and juvenile prints, fabric with patented movie themes, and feedsack cottons also helped contribute to the pinafore usage switching from a basic, white, covering children’s clothes to a one-piece, fashionable garment for the dirty work needed to be done by all ages. In 1941, the U.S. had about 31 textile mills manufacturing the fabric for bag goods which, in 1942, it has been estimated that three million American women and children of all income levels (roughly 3% of the population) were wearing at least one printed feedbag garment. The element of fun was definitely brought in to loosen up the “uniform” of a pinafore with printed, colorful fabrics.
For adults to adopt a garment as childish in historical use, so sweet in its styling as a pinafore, I don’t think it’s because of being in a wishful time-rewind fantasy world. Yes, it can be out of place to adopt the fashions of an age group different than your own. I see it as extending the practicality of a garment, and bringing some lighthearted charm to mundane tasks with something as basic as what clothing is worn to perform necessary tasks. The rise of the “junior” class of teenagers mid-1940s no doubt further propelled the idea of staying youthful (a key theme of pinafores)…what they found popular, adults paid some heed to and women found ways to bring their trends into their own style when desired. Sure, pinafores evolved somewhat into playsuits, or jumpers to be worn over blouses, and even into dresses with ruffles and trim that mimic a pinny, so there was no rigid way to achieve a pinafore look. But no matter what the kind of pinafore, they still find a way to way to mix practicality and playfulness in a way that can be perennially appealing.
Clothing of today is rarely such a hybrid mix of so many different aspects of appealing yet useful, comfy yet nice in one garment. As odd as it might seem, a pinafore definitely has a place that can best be understood if you make and/ or wear one for yourself. There are so many, unlimited ways to achieve some sort of pinafore style that I’ll take a chance and say that there is one that could work for any woman or child. There are 1960’s simple A-line pinafores, 1970s prairie looks, and even modern ones out of denim or suiting. Why just a few weeks ago the famous 19 year old actress Elle Fanning was out and about wearing a fuchsia pink pinafore with a crop tank underneath and designer accessories for an up-to-date option. Perhaps my “Pretty Pinafores” Pinterest board can further inspire you to find a style that suits you, or at least find an image to like and appreciate. Let me know when you find it!
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