Holy Family craft project

Please excuse the blurry edges – it’s very difficult to scan these old magazines. I flattened it as much as possible.

The images will clear up when enlarged twice. Click then click again.

[Taken from McCall’s Christmas Make-it Ideas Vol. VIII, 1965; by Antoinette Brinks]

Adoration of the Kings wall hanging

Adoration of the Kings by Antoinette Brinks

This is an attractive, kind of mid-century Christmas decoration that I found in one of my magazines.

A few years ago when we were in Watertown, New York visiting our son and his family, he and I went to a really great thrift store downtown. It was messy, dust was everywhere. However – not only did they have fantastic bargains, they even had a free table – right out on the sidewalk!

I was thrilled to find lots of old craft magazines from the 1950s and 60s for only .50 each. Today’s post was in one of them.

This was before – way before – photocopiers. When a pattern required enlarging, one was supposed to mark off a grid, then draw the pattern off box by box, using the original as a guide. Therefore, it was possible to increase it to any desirable size.

But it was work.

Now, we just slap something on our home copier (something almost unheard of even into the 80s) and set the size for enlargement.

(The instructions look kind of blurry until you click on them for enlargement.)

[This project is taken from the 1965 McCall’s Christmas Make-it Ideas, Vol. VIII magazine.]

Patty Duke and Cathy Paper Dolls, Part I

Patty Duke, Whitman 1965

Cathy, Whitman 1965

I apologize for the slanted view and cropped off part of Cathy’s hair. It was the only way I could see to scan it at full size, however, I’ll give it another try later and update this post if I’m successful.

Patty's clothes

Patty's clothes

Patty's and Cathy's clothes

Cathy's clothes

Most of the paper dolls that I buy are used and so I assume that there are pieces missing (unless the owner was very tidy and careful). Cathy doesn’t have nearly as many clothes in this set and I wonder why. Were her clothes prettier and became too worn and tattered to keep? Did the owner spill something on them (there are no stains on the dolls or other dresses)? Or did the family dog eat them along with her spelling homework?

Scanned page

Again I apologize for the quality of these pictures with printing being cut off on the side. It’s very difficult to scan these books without completely breaking the spine (which I don’t want to do, of course). Photographing them is only slightly better because, again, the pages won’t lie flat.

For legibility, click to enlarge, then click again. The print will then be clear enough to read.

Photographed page

The green page is from Carol Nichols book: Paper Dolls of the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s: Identification and Value Guide, 2005, printed by Collector Books, P.O. Box 3009, Paducah, Kentucky 42002-3009.

1965 Hairstyles How To (Part I)

Yesterday I mentioned that the “Gidget” television show was filmed in 1965 and these styles are of course from the same time. Remember how Sally Field’s hair was never the same style from one scene to the next?

Here are a couple of styles and the instructions for how to get them from the January 1965 issue of Seventeen magazine.

1965 Junior Fashions

These are Gidget (the Sally Field television show) era fashions. Chambray and madras were hugely popular fashion fabrics. Also, this was the beginning of both the dropped/belted waist dress and empire waist. Very cool.

Colleen Corby and unknown model wearing outfits by Patty Woodard. Overtop about *$12. Pants about $9. Babushka (kerchief) about $3. Shift about $17.

Andrea Allred modeling the low belted cotton knit dress by Lansford Jr. Petites. About *$18. Echo scarf, Van Eli shoes. Stockings by Archer.

Susan Henning modeling the wool twill coat costume by Hallie Jr. About *$50. Adolfo Realites hat, bag by Lefcort, gloves by Wear-Right. Wools loomed in America.

Nanette Vest wearing a cotton chambray and madras trimmed outfit by Ladybug. Dress about *$18. Madras hat about $5. Sandor bangle, shoes by Bandolinos, stockings by Hanes.

Blue or red bleeding madras with gathered yoke, back zipper, lined, *$9.95. Blue, pink or yellow striped shift with white and ruffled, $8.50.

*Prices are about 5x what they were in 1965.

All photos are from the January 1965 edition of Seventeen magazine.

Go Go Boots a la 1966

My parents bought me a pair of white Go Go boots about 1965 when I was in the 5th grade, a year before these were featured in the 1966 Fall/Winter Catalog. I loved them and felt so stylish and teenagery.

Go Go boots were absolutely the In Thing. I remember seeing lots of pairs of them unevenly lined up under the benches at The Wheel on Friday nights. The Wheel was the roller rink at the edge of Mohawk Park in Tulsa and my friend Judy would pick me up to go with her. When you rented the skates, you simply put your shoes/boots under the bench – not in a locker. Our friend, Carol had her Go Go boots stolen one night. Carol’s boots were probably a big temptation because her family had more money than the rest of us in Mingo, and I’m sure that her boots were probably more expensive.

It was always a little scary there to me because we were just about 10 years old and the greasers were there, too. Remember how the kids looked in “The Outsiders“? That’s them. Something about how they just looked made me uneasy – and I never ever saw anything worse than somebody smoking outside the door. But the boys did have the greased back hair and and wore pointed-toed black shoes (kind of like the ones that the band members are wearing in the Pretty Woman link below). The girls had lots of eye make-up and would crowd into the tiny girls’ bathroom. Roy Orbison’s played on the p.a. (public address system) a lot. The kids seemed to really like it.

Whenever I hear that song I don’t think about the hooker movie; no, I’m back at The Wheel.

Perhaps Susie Hinton was there, too. She went to Rogers High School and was writing “The Outsiders” at that time. These are the people she was writing about.

Aren’t these knee socks and stockings just the coolest thing?! We wore lots of them.

Here I’m striking an embarrassingly silly pose on the back of my dad and brother’s work truck in our front yard. This would’ve been about 1966 (not ’65 as I tagged the photo) and the knee socks look just like the ones from the catalog, so Mama may’ve ordered them from that very page.

But I confess, I even wore them with my cowboy boots – no photo of that (and you should be grateful)!

Maternity Clothes, 1960 – 1972

1960 Fall Winter Sears

1965 Fall Winter MW

1965 Fall Winter MW

1966 Montgomery Ward

1966 Montgomery Ward

1972 Montgomery Ward

It was 1975 when I was expecting our first child; I read everything I could get my hands on about pregnancy. All the books encouraged women to try and look their prettiest. They advised that it would help boost confidence, and I think the writers were correct.

My mother started sewing maternity clothes for me; I had the prettiest clothes of my life and more of them (she did the same thing again 5 years later when I was expecting our younger son; this time I needed winter clothes. She even made me a cape so I wouldn’t have to wear a coat that was gaping open in the front). I think it was important to her to do that for me because when she was expecting my older sister, she and my dad didn’t have much money. She said she only had two maternity dresses. She’d wear one and wash the other. Knowing my mother, I imagine she ironed them, too.

When I was choosing the tags for this post, it seemed right to check the Femininity box because that goes to the heart of why I’ve been thinking about maternity clothes. Rarely do I see expectant mothers wearing maternity clothes anymore, and even more rarely are they pretty ones. Before our first grandson was born Joe and I went to buy Anne a maternity dress and we went to about 3 stores before we found one, and even in 2003 the selection was very poor. It may be almost non-existent now.

I don’t understand this. Many of the current fashions are just plain ugly and extremely unflattering to women. However, some of the dresses I’ve seen this summer were quite pretty. So why not pretty maternity clothes?

1965

1965 Corvette
Average Prices
Salary – $6,450
First Class Stamp – .05
Loaf of Bread – .21
Gallon of Milk – .95
Gallon of Gasoline – .31
Car – $2,650
House – $13,600

News:
Bob Hope U.S.O. Christmas Special

Music:
I’m in to Something Good
Help me Rhonda
Count Me In

Books
Up the Down Staircase
The Source
Is Paris Burning?
Making of the President 1964
The Green Berets

Movies:
Battle of the Bulge
Doctor Zhivago
Flight of the Phoenix
Girl Happy
That Darn Cat!
The Cincinnati Kid
The Sons of Katie Elder
The Sound of Music

Television:
Flintstones
Get Smart
The Wild, Wild West
The Rogues – opening titles on youtube
The Dick van Dyke Show –watch online
The Man from U.N.C.L.E.
Bonanza –
Hullabaloo

Fashions:
Clothing and Hair (scroll down)

Cars:
Rambler
Ford Concept Cars
Corvette Stingray

Ads and Commercials:
Oscar Meyer
Coca-cola

Toys

Blippo
Baby First Step

* October 23, 2012 update – I’ve deleted several of the youtube videos which were no longer available.