Category: History

Who made headlines in days past? What was happening that affected home life, entertainment, fashion, financial stability, food? Take a stroll through the towns and streets of yesterday, peek into the houses, and listen to the stories they tell.

History · The Creative Corner · Vintage Needlework

Vintage Embroidery Threads: A Thread for Every Use

VintageJenny
Various embroidery threads arranged on a table. Colors include red, pink green, and several shades of blue.
Left to right: DMC six strand embroidery floss; Anchor six strand embroidery floss; DMC coton a broder; YLI pure silk embroidery floss on top, DMC pearl cotton size 8 on bottom; vintage Wonder Art Perlene pearl cotton.

When I opened my grandmother-in-law’s stash of threads, I was amazed. Colors and types of vintage embroidery threads spilled out of the bags and boxes, left over from seventy years of embroidery. The vintage workbasket held more possibilities than you find in today’s 400 skeins of DMC floss, and Grandmother’s was no exception. In the early to mid twentieth century, needleworker had several companies from which to choose. Need six-strand embroidery floss? You could use DMC, or Bucilla, or Royal Society. What if you didn’t want to use six strand cotton embroidery floss? What then?

Half a black and white catalog page from the 1930s. Various types of embroidery and crochet threads are described with prices.
Early 1930s Frederick Herrschner catalog advertising various embroidery, crochet, and tatting threads.

Then you chose from many different thread types and a host of manufacturers. Silk embroidery floss. Imitation art silk floss, made from rayon. Pearl (perl) cotton. Wool three-strand embroidery yarns. Coton a broder, also known as broder cotton. This was a single strand of thread, available in several sizes and many colors up to about 2010. Size 16 was equivalent to two strands of embroidery floss.

Art embroidery

A bevy of bluebirds decorate household linens from 1915. Table runner, whisk broom holder, laundry bag, pillow cover, and more all feature embroidered bluebirds.
Bluebirds in art embroidery

Embroidery used to be called Art Needlework when it was created for beauty’s sake. The person who made the family clothing always used a sewing needle. But when that needle worker used colored silks or cottons, and used the needle like a paintbrush, the work turned into art. Bluebirds sailed across household linens. Pine trees stood lonely and alone on hillsides. Flowers bloomed on everything from under linens to table runners. The vintage embroidery threads brought them to life.

Once needleworkers began to work with colors in embroidery they seldom looked back. You can see that by the current selection of modern cross stitch patterns.

The companies that released the threads also created patterns to work with them. After all, what good is a brilliant blue thread if you have nothing do use it for? Readers purchased patterns through the newspaper and monthly housekeeping or needlework magazines. They also found projects and threads from their friendly Frederick Herrschner mail order catalog, or through a flyer from their local dime store. By the 1930s it seemed that everyone was into the pattern or project by mail scheme, and needleworkers bought kits and supplies in droves.

Getting ready to begin

If the design didn’t come already stamped on fabric, the worker needed to transfer it. Then came thread selection time. Unless you planned to reproduce a lifelike flower in embroidery silks, or you worked from a prepackaged kit, colors remained up to the worker. Usually a pattern offered suggestions like brown, light blue, or dark pink. Which shades you pulled and how you incorporated the colors together was your choice. Between four or five cotton embroidery thread companies you might have ten or more shades of dark pink. This gave the worker a lot of leeway in color choice.

Often the project featured whatever threads I have on hand. An avid needleworker might have a small box of silk threads, a larger bag of cottons (or several bags of cottons), and some pearl cotton. These could be mixed into a work to create contrast, texture, and shine.

Bye bye threads

A red hank of embroidery thread, a green spool of thread, a red spool of thread, and a green hank of embroidery thread clustered together on a table.
Coton a Broder vs. Sulky Cotton Petites

Most of these vintage embroidery threads exist no longer. Some, like Corticelli and Richardson silks, are simply gone. Corticelli silks and Richardson silk mills both ceased operation in 1932. By this time companies like Bucilla introduced their synthetic art silk, often made from rayon. These threads didn’t really feel like silk, but they were shiny and inexpensive for embroidering. They too are gone, although Bucilla remains as a subsidiary of Plaid Enterprises, and embroidery kits continue to appear under the Bucilla name.

As I mentioned before, most of the coton a broder threads were discontinued in the 2010’s, at least in the U.S. It looks like this thread (also called broder special or brilliant cutwork and embroidery thread) is still being produced in limited colors by both DMC and Anchor. However, getting any of this to the U.S. can be a difficult matter. You may have to special order it from Europe if you want some. This is NOT the same as the thread called Floche. Floche is far more expensive and not as sturdy.

Good news

All is not dreary news, however. Some threads, like cotton embroidery floss and pearl cotton, still exist. You can find substitutes for many others, even though you may not find them at your local craft store. You might need to poke around a bit on the Internet to find them.

Here are some options:

  • Six strand embroidery floss: DMC, Anchor, Sullivan’s, Madeira.
  • Coton a broder/ broder special: You may be able to locate white, ecru, black in the U.S. As a substitute look at Sulky Petites, size 12. It’s thinner than the size 16 coton a broder, but it will give you the same experience of one strand that equals two strands of embroidery floss.
  • Pearl cotton: still exists. Look for DMC. Some chains have house brands in limited colors.
  • Silks: Shiny silks in the U.S. have largely been replaced by threads like DMC’s shiny satin, which is 100% rayon. For a traditional embroidery silk from France, look for Au Ver a Soie’s Alger thread.
  • Silks: Although they are not all shiny, companies have produced 100% silk embroidery threads within the past 20 years or so. Some options: Treenway Silks, Caron Waterlilies (silk variegated), Kreinik Silk Mori, Rainbow Gallery’s Splendor.
  • Stranded wools: Appleton wools have existed since 1835 in the UK and they still provide wool yarns to the needlepoint market. These work wonderfully for embroidery. Once I came across some instructions from the 1850s calling for “5 shades of apple green wool.” Who makes five shades of apple green? Appleton wools does. Their leaf green selections fit my project perfectly.

Be creative… have fun!

Regardless what threads you use, I hope you enjoy the process. Picking out various threads, choosing or drawing a pattern, beginning a project… these are exciting times. Incorporate one or two of these old-time threads into your next project, and see how you like it. You never know. You may be hooked.

History · The Magazine Rack

Ivy for Gold Star Mothers: a WWI Memorial

VintageJenny
WWI photo of five service men clustered around an upright piano. The pianist plays a popular war tune while the there sing. One stands back, leaning on the piano, smiling.
Armistice Day: Remembering the boys who didn’t come home.

In the July 1920 issue of Woman’s Home Companion, a curious editorial snippet offered ivy to Gold Star mothers. The little article was so unusual that it caught my eye. Gold Star mothers lost their sons during World War I. The gold star established that this mother’s son enlisted, and this mother’s son died. The editorial said:

“Shortly after the declaration of the Armistice, in November, 1918, an American woman went over the Argonne battlefield with her husband. The sky was serene and the cannon had ceased to roar; but over and under and through everything was the ruin of war––the shattered, blasted trees, shallow ditches where men had taken hasty refuge, pits made by bursting shells, and mounds that still sheltered the dead where they had fallen.

The ivy

“But along with the gray desolation there was the hushed beauty and serenity of the ‘big timber’ forest itself. On the very top of one of the great hills the woman found some ivy growing. The broken branches of the trees around it were shriveled with the gases from the shells and blackened with fire; but the ivy was growing out again, a sign and symbol of life pushing forth anew in the midst of death.

He seemed so young to me, not yet nineteen, killed in action October, 1918.

a bereaved mother

“The woman dug up the ivy and carried it in a paper package on the five days’ motor trip back. In Paris, the French gardener at her friend’s house revived it. When it was time to sail for America, the ivy was at least alive. In her stateroom, homeward bound, she placed it near the air, and it suddenly began to grow. It has continued to grow ever since.

“Now there are hundreds of little ivy plants from that one shoot, and more are coming all the time.

The offer

“Any American mother whose son was lost in the war, and who would like to have one of these plants as a sign of green remembrance––and as a token from another American mother whose own sons are far too young to have been in the great war––is asked to write to Mrs. Frank Vanderlip, Scarborough-on-Hudson, New York. In writing, please give the boy’s name, regiment and number, and the mothers’ full name and address.”

The response

As I read the short editorial I felt my eyes burn with tears. And I wondered… what was the response? Did anyone take this lady’s offer and send for a plant?

Well, reading on, it seems that they did. The October 1920 editorial page contained an update on the ivy and the mothers who requested it. I’ll reproduce this part in full as well, because I think it brings us back to the real meaning of Armistice Day, and what it cost. It reads:

“Up to August 1st more than 400 mothers had asked fo these little plants, and been supplied. There were letters from every state in the Union.

With the hope that it will climb up to the window of the little room where my baby slept so few years ago. He was seventeen when he enlisted.

A bereaved mother

“A reading of these letters has been a most touching experience, and has brought a realization of the consequences of war which the dispatches from the front never did. Just what to call the little ivies seemed often puzzling, and the request might be for a spring, plant, cutting, slip, bud, seed, sprout, start, root, or shoot. But what matter? It was to ‘Plant on my dear boy’s grave’ or ‘With the hope that it will climb up to the window of the little room where my baby slept so few years ago. He was seventeen when he enlisted.’

They were so young

“Perhaps there is no thing in the letters more noticeable than the youth of those who have gone. ‘My boy was eighteen,’ the mother writes, or ‘twenty,’ or ‘twenty-two.’ There can be no quarrel with the use of the word boy. There is another term often used which tells this even more simply: my child. ‘He was our only child.’ ‘He seemed so young to me, not yet nineteen, killed in action October, 1918.’ And the brave attempt, old as sorrow itself –– which is the oldest thing in the world –– somehow to connect everything with the one one who is gone. ‘I think this piece, perhaps, may have come from the vine my boy may have seen there in the Argonne the morning he was killed.’

“The young ivy plants seemed to be good travelers. ‘It was hardly wilted’ came from as far away as Mississippi. ‘The sprout seems to be doing fine,’ writes another. And this, breathing enthusiasm and true optimism: ‘It is growing nicely. Had another leaf before a week.’ ‘I’m sure it will respond to affection. Flowers and plants know the touch of love quite as well as humans.’

“A pleasant thought cropping out in many letters is expressed by one mother when she says, ‘And when the ivy grows I will give slips to other Gold Star mothers, the same as you have done.’ In the meantime, Mrs. Vanderlip, whose ‘thoughtfulness, sweetness, and kindness’ is mentioned in almost every letter, has more baby ivy plants and she will gladly send them to those mothers who ask.”

Passing it on

Hopefully, those plants did thrive. And maybe some of the ivy for Gold Star mothers survived well enough to send cuttings to other Gold Star mothers, who treasured their little memory of green from France. Today many wear red poppies on Armistice Day to never forget. Hopefully the healthy green ivy helped these families to remember those lives cut so short by war.

Something a bit different

If the 1916-1920 time period intrigues you, you might enjoy Cinderella’s Confession. This dates from the same time period, and is an advertisement from 1919 changed the course of advertising history.

History · The Magazine Rack

Magazines for Everyone

VintageJenny

If you glance through the pages of the popular household magaazines from 1920-1940 something may dawn on you. It did me. These were magazines for everyone, as long as the woman reading them matched the editors’ ideal subscriber.

Each magazine, of course, had its own dream reader. Woman’s World, for instance, was for the Midwest reader. Needlecraft positioned itself for the lower-income reader – many of its projects could be completed with a little fabric, a crochet hook or knitting needles, and thread. Every magazine, from Good Housekeeping to Ladies’ Home Journal, had its intended readership.

A little girl holds her doll close as the cover image to Half-Century Magazine of December, 1922.
Cover image from The Half-Century Magazine, December 1922.

However, all these titles didn’t succeed as magazines for everyone. A good number of potential readers were excluded. For instance, although every magazine covered the national holidays and Christian holidays, no one printed a Passover menu for Jewish readers. They were on their own. Did the publishers just not think their readership would appreciate such an article, or did no one on the staff have the expertise to write it?

Half-Century Magazine

One glaring omission appeared in the African-American community. The women’s magazines featured dress models on the fashion pages that looked different from African-American family members, even though everyone dressed in the same styles. In 1916, Half-Century Magazine launched in Chicago and it filled that void. Half-Century Magazine used African-American models on its fashion pages. Only in publication for nine years, the magazine spoke to African-American homemakers. And frankly, it is a delight to read.

I don’t have any issues of Half-Century Magazine in their original paper format. Actual subscriptions never topped 16,000 so hard copies are difficult to find. In fact, when Negro Universities Press attempted to reprint the existing issues in 1969, it couldn’t find copies of all the issues. Paging through I found a placeholder which basically said “We couldn’t find this issue. If you know of a copy let us know and we will include it in a later printing.” They are that scarce.

Excellent Quality

They may be scarce, but they are excellent. An issue of Half-Century Magazine contained short stories, a serialized novel, current fashion, needlework patterns and sewing tips. Each month devoted a full half page to jokes and quips like this one:

“Yes, Bertha is going to marry for love.”
“How foolish!”
“Not at all. She had sense enough to fall in love with a millionaire.”

Half-Century Magazine, January 1920

If I had original copies of these magazines, I would love to reproduce the recipes from the cooking pages. Some of the recipes used inexpensive or unusual ingredients, like lamb’s kidneys. Others introduced innovative treatments of normal 1920s dishes, like adding nuts to a macaroni salad. Actually, quite a few I would love to recreate. One issue’s Tea Ring recipe in January, 1920, includes raisins but no yeast and would make a tremendous teatime or breakfast loaf.

Depending on the month of the year, subscribers read about dinner etiquette, household hints, and weight loss (an all-consuming seasonal topic in every woman’s magazine of the period). One issue illustrated current hairstyles, and the magazine offered a sewing pattern service to subscribers. Most issues included poetry.

Tackling Social Issues

The women’s magazines of the Twenties through the Forties took stands on various social issues within their pages, and Half-Century Magazine was no different. Its editors covered cultural and political issues. They published letters from subscribers who needed to vent. And a regular columnist answered questions about law and inheritance.

In short, everything a homemaker would need from month to month was included in Half-Century Magazine. I wish it had continued past 1925, but the publisher ceased publication in order to launch a newspaper he called the Chicago Bee. You can download the 1923 – 1925 years of Half-Century Magazine from Google Books and see for yourself.

History · The Magazine Rack

Saving Magazines for a Century

VintageJenny1 Comment
Illustration of 1920s man and woman by Charles D. Mitchell.
Illustration for a short story by Charles D Mitchell, 1925.

Saving magazines for a century? Or even fifty years? Why would people do this? What was so engaging about these periodicals that they lived in the bottom of a cupboard or drawer for that length of time?

Some of these magazines stay with a family for three or four generations. I’m a third generation owner myself. While visiting my husband’s 94 year old grandmother on my honeymoon, we uncovered a stack of needlework magazines from the 1930s. She sent them home with me. I’ve taken care of them lovingly ever since. In not too many years they will reach their centennial anniversary. Maybe I’ll bake them a cake.

Learning New Skills

Actually, people held onto their magazines for several different reasons. They were considered valuable. Women’s magazines often contained step by step cooking instructions for new cooks. Divided into twelve to fourteen months (or even longer), each article told how to create a specific type of food. If you used those magazines to learn how to cook, or even to refresh your memory, you aren’t going to throw out the “breads” issue.

Experiencing the Best Authors and Illustrators

Photo of short story by Gene Stratton-Porter.
Gene Stratton-Porter, the author of ‘Girl of the Limberlost,’ also wrote short stories for magazines.

They also contained some of the best writers of the day. Edna Ferber, Mary Roberts Rhinehart, Kathleen Norris, Temple Bailey, and Faith Baldwin filled the pages. These authors, and more like them, kept women reading and subscribing for more. Usually the stories focused on relationships, but sometimes readers found a mystery or humor. Some of the stories focused on a social problem. And many times subscribers read through a new serialized novel by a famous author before its publication. Each issue published a few chapters of the novel until it was complete. The magazines with the best stories tended to be kept by their owners. Scroll through one of those magazines, Woman’s Home Companion.

Some magazines published new or famous art prints that could be removed and framed for the home. Others specialized in current or new popular artists. (Norman Rockwell, for instance, illustrated for The Saturday Evening Post for years.) Almost all these illustrations used charcoal, pencil, or ink drawings printed in black and white. They were still eye-catching and well done. Some magazines placed a color seasonal print on the cover every month to catch readers’ eyes. Others used the cover to highlight a project inside.

Reading for New Recipes

Picture of woman standing over stove, 1920s. Menus for One Week in February.
A welcome sight for the weary cook. All meals planned with some recipes included.

As the seasons turned, home managers turned to the pages of last year’s periodicals looking for useful, seasonal recipes. All cooking in the 1920s and 30s was seasonal cooking, unless the cook could obtain food in a can, or personally canned it herself the year before. Although many periodicals preached meal planning, the monthly menu calendar proved a welcome sight to many a weary cook. Sometimes published recipes were family favorites. Others combined familiar ingredients in new ways. During the Colonial revival of the 1920s, some periodicals published colonial-style recipes that used cornmeal as an ingredient.

Providing Patterns for Crafting

Clipping from Anne Orr needlework page, showing purse frame and embroidered purse blank for purchase.
Anne Orr was a famous needlework designer of the time.

Some readers saved magazines for the needlework patterns. For example, filet crochet reached its heyday during the 1920s and 30s. Needleworkers who enjoyed that type of crochet work kept their magazines so they had ready access to patterns that all too soon dipped into obscurity. If someone liked to tat lace, the magazines provided a goldmine of patterns. Each issue of a needlework periodical until the 1940s or beyond featured one or more tatting patterns to keep those shuttles moving. My favorite tatting pattern of all time dates from 1919. Without saving magazines for a century, I never would have met this pattern.

Often, the magazines stayed around to be brought out every now and then in a fit of nostalgia. “Do you remember when…” can be a great story starter. A comment about an article sparks a family story. In addition, there is something precious about keeping Grandma’s magazines that she loved enough to treasure for fifty years. Paging through them brings up memories of Grandma’s baked bean recipe – with no barbecue sauce, thank you. Only savory beans for Grandma. Looking at the needlework patterns brings to mind the room dividers she embroidered in brown and green. (Wonder what ever happened to those?) Memories become as mellow as the pages that turn when we look through the old magazines that stay in the family generation after generation. There’s something to saving magazines for a century. Especially if they’re good ones.

History · Short Stories · The Magazine Rack

Cinderella Confesses Everything: Part 2

VintageJenny

Today I give you the rest of the story. We haven’t even gotten to the confession part yet! But first, a little more background. If you haven’t read the first half of the story, start here.

When G. Lynn Sumner helped to create and release this story for the women’s periodicals of 1919, this was a gamble. No one had ever tried to sell with a story before. Today it’s become so commonplace that we view it as cliché. Back then, however, it was new.

And how did it work? Over the next few years, running these full-page story advertisements, the company brought in over 12 million dollars… from a product that cost its purchaser $61. However, that $61 had the buying power of nearly $1,000 in 2021 dollars. So this was no small investment for a person who wanted to either cut costs or start her own shop as an entrepreneur.

But how did it work for the women who sent their money to this school? Was it a waste of their time, energy and resources? Actually, the program really did work. One of their 1920s newsletters, sent to students and graduates of the program, lists several Apprentice Wanted ads from graduates who set up dressmaking shops in their own towns and now needed extra help. The newsletters also printed real letters from students that told of how much money they saved on clothing. Some families saved from 1/3 to 1/2 of their annual clothing budget by designing and making clothing at home.

Even though these stories were fictional, and the women reading them probably knew the magazine ads weren’t true, the stories spoke to felt needs of the readers: an inability to fit in; loneliness; desperation over finances; feeling less-than or socially inept. In the world right after World War I, where sickness seemed to go wherever it wanted and prices continued to climb, these feelings were real and tangible. And in some small way, the Institute provided a glimmer of hope.

Enough of the numbers. On with the story.

Closeup pencil sketch of Twenties Cinderella entering the workroom.
Cinderella enters the room.

Cinderella continued…

Never will I forget that Wednesday evening. It was the most wonderful of our lives! We had never seen our Cinderella looking quite so sweet, so beautiful. And such a dinner as she gave us! After dinner she took us all through her new home and then, gathering us before a great log fire in the living room, she told us her story: 

“Of course you all know what a wretched, forlorn creature I was when I first came to the office, she began. That is all past now and I have blotted out of my memory the heartaches of those first cruel weeks when my shabby attire made me a fit subject for ridicule. 

“I had never known what it meant to have stylish, becoming clothes. My home was in a little cross-roads town in Iowa. My mother died when I was a mere child and my father brought me up in a good, substantial home, but with never an opportunity to get out and see how other girls lived. I had no chance to learn the things about clothes that would have been familiar to most girls of my age. 

“Two years ago father died, and when his affairs had been straightened out there was only a few hundred dollars left. So I went to Benton City and took stenography at the business school there. As soon as I had finished my course I came here and within two days had secured a position at Warners. 

“And now for my confession. At the office for the first time in my life I realized how different I was from the other girls. I saw that I was not one of you. I did not know how to make myself attractive. And i felt it. At first I was tempted to give up and go back to the little country town i had left. But one night at the boarding-house a young woman whom i had to secretly admired, but never spoken to, slipped her arm through mine after dinner and said, “Come up to my room, child. I want to talk to you.

“Once in her room she looked down at me with the kindest smile, and said, ‘I am Louise Stewart. I have the little dress-making shop on Wilcox Square that you pass on your way to the office. Two years ago I couldn’t sew a stitch. Today folks say I’m the best designer and dressmaker in this city. And I learned all about planning and making fashionable clothes – right in my own room evenings.’ 

“‘I have seen you going to your room every night,’ she continued. ‘How would you like to use some of your evenings learning to make stylish, charming dresses for yourself, garments that will be a delight to wear, wonderful dresses, waists and suits that will surprise your friends.’ 

“‘Oh, tell me how!’ I fairly gasped.

You may doubt your ability to do it. Never fear. So did I.

“‘Sit right down now,’ she said, ‘and write a little note to the Woman’s Institute and simply tell them that you would like to learn to make your own clothes.’ 

“She gave me the address and told me this great Institute had developed a wonderful plan by which any woman or girl, wherever she might live, could learn right in her home or boarding place, in spare time, to make all her own clothes and hats.

“‘You may doubt your ability to do it,’ she said. ‘Never fear. So did I. But come into my shop someday and see the dresses I make!’

“I hurried to my room, wrote the letter, and mailed it at the corner 20 minutes later. And that night I dreamed I was making and wearing more beautiful clothes than I had ever seen on living people, and that every one liked me! 

“In a few days an attractive, illustrated booklet came, telling me about the Woman’s Institute and its 45,000 members. The booklet contained many wonderful letters from these members praising the work of the Institute and telling how easily they had learned at home to make their own clothes. There were letters from housewives, business women, girls at home or in school, girls in stores, shops and offices. And there were, oh, so many letters from mothers who poured out their thanks because the Institute had taught them how to have dainty clothes for themselves and their little ones at a mere fraction of what they had cost before!  

“Many others wrote that the Institute had made it possible for them to take up dressmaking and millinery as a business. Some now have important positions in big, fashionable city shops; others, like Louise Stewart, are making money in cozy, exclusive shops of their own. Still others have secured good-paying positions as teachers of sewing and dressmaking. 

There are girls of 15 or 16 and women of 50 or 60.

“The Institute members, I found, are of all ages. There are girls of 15 or 16 and women of 50 or 60. The majority live in the United States, but there are hundreds in Canada and in foreign lands — all learning dressmaking or millinery at home just as successfully as if they were together in a classroom! 

“Well, when I read all those letters and then read in detail about the plan by which the Institute teaches, I knew that, what all these other thousands of women and girls could do, I could do. 

“So, without telling anyone, I joined the Institute and took up dressmaking. I could scarcely wait until my first lesson came. And when at last I found it on the table in the hall one night, I carried it upstairs to my room and opened it as if it were a love letter! Turning the pages, I looked at the wonderful pictures! There are nearly 2000 in the dressmaking course alone and they illustrate perfectly just exactly what to do. 

“And the delightful part of it is that almost at once you start making garments. Why, that little blue organdie waist you admired so much I made from my third lesson! The course can easily be completed in a few months by studying an hour a day. I found my couldn’t help learning rapidly! The textbooks seem to foresee and explain everything. And the teachers take just as personal an interest as if they were right beside you. 

“And what was most important to me, I learned not only how to make every kind of garment, but I learned what colors and fabrics were most appropriate for me, how to develop those little touches that make clothes distinctively becoming to the wearer.  My course opened up a whole new world to me. When, after just a few lessons, I finished my first dress and stood before the mirror, I hardly recognized myself. I was tempted to wear it the next morning to the office, but I determined to keep my skill a secret until I had enough new things made so that I would never need to wear the old ones again. 

“The lessons followed each other so naturally that I was soon working on difficult dresses and suits. Gradually, I learned to copy models I saw in the shop windows, on the street, or in fashion magazines. Every step was so clearly explained that the things I had always thought only a professional dressmaker could develop were perfectly easy for me!

“Luckily, I began my studies in the summer time and by fall I had more and prettier clothes than I had ever seen before in my life, and they cost me only one fourth of what ordinary clothes would have cost ready made. I couldn’t possibly have had them any other way. 

“A little while after starting the dressmaking I had taken up millinery, too, and soon I was making and trimming hats such as I have been wearing lately. And so, just a few months from the eventful night when Louise Stewart told me about the Institute, I walked in on you that morning — in the results of my evenings of delightful secret study.

 “My wedding clothes! You girls saw them before dinner – did you ever see any more beautiful? Well, I made every stitch myself — a whole section of my course was devoted to complete directions for planning and making a bride’s entire outfit. I didn’t have the least bit of trouble – even with my wedding dress.

“So that’s my confession. The rest of my story you know – what a wonderful change this made in my life – how friends and happiness seemed to follow close upon the change in my appearance that lead you to call me Cinderella. I adore that name! The whole thing is like a fairy story! But of one thing I am sure — I owe it all to the Woman’s Institute. “

The page goes on to explain how the reader, too, can see the same or similar results as Cinderella if she will only take the time to complete the tiny interest form at the bottom of the page. Many women did. And many learned to sew their own clothing. Foundation garments like corsets were still purchased, and stockings were bought ready made, but the Institute told its students how to make every other article of clothing they needed, from underwear to a wedding trousseau. And the women, by and large, learned the skills they set out to master.

History · Short Stories · The Magazine Rack

It Takes a Story to Reach a Nation, or Cinderella Confesses Everything

VintageJenny1 Comment

The year was 1919, and a company was about to try something new in the world of advertising. Known as the Woman’s Home Institute of Domestic Arts and Sciences, it was trying to reach women who were interested in learning how to sew, cook, or make their own hats at home.

Some of them were teachers who needed to look presentable but received little money to make that happen. Others worked in the offices of the cities, and found that after the month’s room and board were paid, they had little left for the luxuries of life. Most were housewives old and new. Some longed for an artistic outlet outside the home, while others needed a little help to make ends meet.

They had only been in business for three years, as an offshoot of a larger correspondance school. Here Mary Brooks Picken served as Director of Instruction. She wrote most of the manuals used in the courses. She had a passion for helping women to succeed in the places they could. And students were enrolling, but it was slow. Then one night the president of the Institute, G. Lynn Sumner, decided to take a chance. Try something entirely different. He, along with the advertising firm that worked with the school, decided to tell a story designed to gather students. Their first story was called Cinderella’s Confession and it was so successful that they used it over, and over, and over. In time this story appeared in most of the popular women’s magazines of 1919-1925. Here it is.

I’m giving you the first half this time, and you’ll find the second half in the next post. These stories each completely filled a page with tiny magazine text, with only a black and white illustration and a small coupon to break the sea of type.

Pencil sketch of a woman entering an office of secretaries in 1920.
In walked a wonderfully radiant creature in the neatest, prettiest, most becoming dress you ever saw.

Cinderella’s Confession

The story of how a shabby little stranger
became the best dressed girl in our town

Her real name was Enid, and I’ll never forget how she looked that first morning! When she came in the door the whole office stopped and stared and – I am ashamed to say it – we grinned. That dress – I suppose it had been stylish once, about five years before! Its tired-out bronze color made her face look even paler than it was and it fit her as if it had been made for a big sister. A faded old-rose toque set dejectedly upon her mass of unruly yellow hair. She was a picture – so shabby and forlorn that I pitied her! 

We all thought she’d gotten into the office by mistake. But she hung up her hat and made herself at home at Sarah Long’s old desk. And there she quietly did her work for months – always the office mystery and always an object of pity among the rest of the girls at Warner’s. Hartley, the office manager, told us all he knew about her – an orphan from a little town in Iowa – that was her story in a nutshell. She roomed alone, and in the office and out she kept to herself. The truth was you just couldn’t invite her out – in those clothes. And so we simply came to regard her as an office fixture that nobody quite understood.

Then one morning, early in the fall, Enid gave the office its second shock – a more surprising one, if possible, then the first. Everybody was on time that morning – except Enid. We spent the first few minutes after the bell rang wondering where she could be. But by 9 o’clock we had all nicely settled down to work and the typewriters were clicking like mad when the door opened and in walked a wonderfully radiant creature in the neatest, prettiest, most becoming dress you ever saw and a charming hat you just knew had been made for that little blonde head!

Every typewriter stopped as if by magic.

Every typewriter stopped as if by magic, and two dozen audible murmurs of admiration registered the effect on that office full of girls. Hartley looked up from a sheet of figures with a frown, then smoothed down what hair he had with one hand, yanked off his spectacles with the other, and rose to learn the caller’s business. He was halfway between his desk and the door before the young lady who had caused all the commotion smilingly removed her hat, and we realized for the first time that it was Enid!

No one in the office could keep her mind on her work the rest of that morning. After months of the shabby bronze dress, the old-rose toque, this was too much! And no one ever realized before how pretty Enid really was. But in her new attire she was simply a new creature. The transformation was so complete that even the old name didn’t fit, and it just seemed natural that from that day we should call her “Cinderella.”

Next morning, Cinderella was dressed just as tastefully in another charming dress. She had evidently worn the old outfit until she was ready to give us a steady surprise, because after that her dresses, waists, skirts and hats were always becoming and stylish to the last degree. 

I never saw such a complete and sudden change in the attitude of a lot of girls. Cinderella, instead of being ignored, became the pet of the whole office. The girls consulted her about their clothes, beaux, and other things. She was deluged with invitations. Her costumes were admired in and out of the office and she was the envy of every girl in the place. 

Gradually she became popular in the social life of the town. She was in constant demand at parties and dances. Cinderella, the little stranger, had taken the town by storm and all because of her magic transformation from shabby attire to radiant, becoming clothes. 

One Saturday in December, as we were all leaving the office, Cinderella called us together. 

“Girls!” she said. “I’ve a secret to tell you. This is my last day at the office. I’m going to marry Tom Warner next Monday!” 

Tom! Cinderella was certainly living up to her reputation for surprises. Tom was the oldest son of the boss and one of the most promising young men in town. We could hardly believe our ears, but a moment later she stepped into Tom Warner’s big gray limousine and was whisked out of sight. 

None of us dreamed how much Cinderella would be missed in that office. We would gather into little clusters after lunch and recall her coming to the place and what a wonderful change had come over her and all the rest of us when she blossomed out in distinctive clothes that made her attractive, beautiful and lovable. 

Then one morning Dan Hartley found in his mail a dainty scented envelope bearing a gold monogram. He opened it, called us all around him and read: 

Dear Girls and Boys: I’m coming home tomorrow and I miss you all so much that you’re to be the very first guests at our new home. I want you all to come out to 301 Arlington Avenue next Wednesday evening. Come right up from the office and don’t bother about Sunday togs. I’m going to make my confession and I don’t want any of you to miss it. With love, Cinderella. 

History

Domestic Diva or Retail Rebel?

VintageJenny2 Comments

Choking back the tears, she thanked everyone for coming. The funeral was over. Four years. They’d been married only four years, and now her Harry was gone. 

He was just 26 years old. And two days ago, he was alive. But things move fast these days, and Harry who died on June 20 was buried on June 21 after a home funeral. A funeral service held in their own home. 

Picture of woman in 1918 in flowing dress.
Is she a Domestic Diva or a Retail Rebel? She doesn’t look very rebel-like here, does she? But she had a goal, and she used domestic tradition to reach it. Photo dates from 1917 or 1918.

Twenty-four years old, and a widow. Not that it was unheard of, in 1911. No, unfortunately, such things were too common. But to think… to think… what was she going to do? Going back to her parents’ home was simply not an option. She had eight siblings, and most of them still lived at home. 

Since her marriage to Harry she’d taught classes at the local YWCA. Her passion was sewing, and she shared her knowledge in her classes. She loved to sew! There was nothing quite like putting the small house to rights, and then sitting down for an afternoon of creating at the sewing machine. Finishing a new dress or coat gave the maker such a feeling of accomplishment. Passing that ability along was one of the best things she could do. 

Changes Ahead

Teaching at the YWCA, however, wasn’t going to support her. As soon as time allowed following the funeral, she found a position as instructor at the American College of Dressmaking in Kansas City, Missouri. This promising and popular correspondence school taught sewing lessons by mail to women all over the country. 

These were full days, days she spent long hours at her sewing machine. Later, she remembered with great fondness the kindness she received from neighbors. When she was so busy, scarcely thinking of food, they never forgot to send her a bowl of stew or a meal from their own tables. They always kept the young widow in mind, and she remained thankful for them, long after she moved away from the little house she and Harry had shared.

Well trained and passionate at her craft, by 1915 Mary was the head of instruction at the dressmaking school. However, at about this time she heard a siren’s call. A larger correspondence school had heard about her skill and lured her away from the American College of Dressmaking. This school specialized in men’s career training. They taught courses in art and advertising, mechanics and masonry. And now they wanted to open a women’s division, but they needed someone capable to run it.

Here was a place that Mary could make the difference she longed to make. Drawing upon her years of training in dressmaking and tailoring, plus her experience with teaching, she wrote many lesson manuals on various dressmaking and design topics. She also oversaw the writing of two sets of lesson books covering millinery (hat-making) and cooking. With three subjects, the women’s division was ready to begin in early 1916. By the end of 1916, the school had its first female graduate. Mary was beginning to be known as a Domestic Diva.

Freedom with a Needle

Over the course of the next twenty years, over 100,000 women took these courses. And they learned to sew. But Mary’s goal was to teach the women more than how to sew a straight seam. Mary, you see, was a quiet subversive. She believed that teaching women how to sew their own clothing could lead them to financial freedom. She was, in her own way, a rebel.

How frightening it was to find herself a 24 year old widow! If she could help women make it through a situation like that, her life’s work would be worthwhile. Between 1916 and 1925 Mary encouraged women to take the courses, using advertising and the occasional gimmick if necessary. She explained that through the coursework she designed, any woman could learn to sew. But more than that, she could learn to copy the clothes she saw in a shop window, or on the street. And she could make extra money sewing for others who did not know how to sew. 

And for those brave enough, or those who needed it, she included information on how to open and run a dressmaking shop. Her advice was that a good dressmaker would always find work. Many women started home businesses or opened small storefronts and found the financial burden less heavy. Some excelled and thrived. Letters poured into the office extolling Mary and her methods. 

The woman’s name was Mary Brooks Picken. She wrote close to 100 books on dressmaking and sewing in her lifetime, and her books are still in demand. And that school? They called it the Woman’s Institute of Domestic Arts and Sciences. Most of her books are long out of print. After collecting them for years, I am working to make them available in their correct order. 

So which is it, Domestic Diva or Retail Rebel? Was Mary a Domestic Diva who was in charge of teaching the best available information in cooking, sewing, and millinery? Or was she a Retail Rebel, someone who upset the status quo by encouraging women that they could make their own way, and they could be financially independent? Really, it depends. It depends who you ask.