Facile Patterns

Hello one and all! I hope you've been having a pleasant week?

Last week I had a rather full mind posting often, but this week I decided to sew and let the blog breath a little. 

But anyway I'm back and in the mean time I've received these lovely Australian patterns from Bella's Vintage Affair - (She has a great floral Oilcloth rain coat for sale at the moment!)

Fitted dress with pleat opening from waist

Maternity dress

Shirt dress with long or short sleeves

Dress with princess seams

Drop waist dress with pleated skirt

These patterns are from January 1973 and are multi-size - which is great if you want to sew for a few different people as the patterns go from extra small to large. 

The pattern company and origins are a mystery. There are a few mentions of them on eBay, but the real clue as to what company these patterns came from lies in the message on the inside of the pattern 

Fashions Change. And children grow. With bewildering speed. Yet FACILE keeps your family fashionable - and up-to-the-minute elegant all year round - on a budget

For every three months, FACILE brings you a new range of 50 exciting family patterns, computer programmed to fit any figure. You select an many - or as few - as you wish for the incredibly low price of 99c for each pattern

There are adult and children's styles. All of them modern. All or them practical. And remember - childrens patterns grow with the child. FACILE is family outfitting - at fantastic cost savings

From my guess, there may have been some kind of catalogue or order form that came out every 3 months and you simply chose which ones you liked. 

The Facile patterns company was situated in or around Clayfield in Queensland - I would ask my mum if she remembered them, but she grew up in New Zealand and I don't think Facile stretched that far over the Tasman. 
I also searched the Queensland Library records, but alas nothing has been documented there either. 

So to my Australian friends - have a dig through your mums patterns and if you find one, make sure you keep a tight hold of them as they are not very easily found!

I also got this pretty Maudella Pattern - I love the sketchy style of the illustration and those two dollybirds look like their ready for a night out in their matching dresses. Maudella patterns eventually became New Look Patterns in the 1980's so you know if you pick one up, they are genuine vintage.

And here is the current progress on my red drop-waist dress! The instructions are very tricky (again Burdastyle, whats the go?) so I had to "translate" them into my own sewing language which is really more like the kind of wording in the Simplicity or Vogue patterns. 

Do you often find pattern instructions a little tricky to follow? 

Enjoy the rest of your weekend all! Mine is very close to finishing. 

We've had some lovely weather and a visit from 2 naughty wasps who decided to come inside the house. We trapped them between the glass and screen sliding doors, but they took a long time to find their way out again. Poor dears... 

Take care! 

Cat xo