Not suitable for plaids?????

Today this lovely gem arrived.  The front of the skirt is yoked with a quarter circle lower panel.  The back of the skirt is a darted straight skirt.  I love the idea of this skirt–can’t decide between a straight skirt or a flared skirt–wear both.  A woman wearing this skirt would provide a different impression coming and going.  I want to make this from a pinwale cord with a plaid print.  The envelope back warns “corduroy, striped, plaid or diagonal fabrics are not suitable”.   But wait, I say to myself, the front illustration clearly shows the skirt in a plaid fabric.  Okay,  technically it’s a large windowpane check  . . . but still . . . I’ll be now off on a quest to find out if a plaid will look okay on the bias as it would be in the front panel of this skirt.  I think it will look fine.  And I’m not worried about the corduroy either as I am intending to use a finer wale which will drape nicer and won’t have such an obvious stripe to it (plus the plaid will disguise that).  And since velveteen is listed as a suggested fabric, I would think corduroy would be fine.  Speaking of velveteen and corduroy: I have thought for many years that velveteen was merely corduroy without the wales.  It turns out that there is a difference between velveteen and no wale corduroy.  According to Claire Schaeffer’s Fabric Sewing Guide,   the pile of no wale cord is woven in rows while it’s random in velveteen.  I examined the brown velveteen on a dress I made last winter for my girl and found out that it is not a true velveteen, it is a no-wale cord.  But I’m still going to call it velveteen as “a dress made of brown velveteen” sounds more lovely and is easier to say  than “a dress made of brown no-wale corduroy”.

This skirt does call for belting to make a belt that attached to the inside of the top edge somehow.  After doing a little research on that topic at Vintage Sewing  Reference Library, I think petersham ribbon will be an okay substitute.   This poor old pattern; it’s not in good shape.  I’m making copies of everything and then I’ll slip the poor dear in an acid free cover and won’t handle it any more.   Inside the envelope with the pattern pieces and directions are some pieces of The New York Times from February 27, 1955.  One article is titled “Babies, Babies, Babies–4,ooo,ooo Problems” about the baby boom and what problems this increase in population may cause.   There’s also an article on the problems involved with legal and illegal wiretapping and the history of what we’d probably call “electronic evesdropping” in our era.  Fifty-two years later we’re still concerned with the drain on resources that “baby boom” may cause and also with the issue of law enforcement/government’s invasion into the privacy of citizens.   Apparently, the original owner of this lovely pattern used the paper for some pattern alterations.   She could have never imagined  that so many years later somebody would find those pieces and blog about them.