When Purchasing Dress Materials

Manawatu Times, Volume LV, Issue 7110, 7 January 1930, Page 11

When Purchasing Dress Materials

THINGS TO REMEMBER. How many times have you bought dress material only to find yourself with too little or too much for your purpose ? A safe rule in buying a piece of material is to inquire its width, and then decide whether the given number of inches will be sufficient for your purpose. Another good rule is to pay a fair price a yard and get a wide fabric.

The more you pay for crepe de chine for example, the wider it is. Silk voiles and muslins follow the same rule. Thus by going in for the more costly material, you will find it invariably works out cheaper in the end, quality for quality, of course. Silk also varies in width, and it is a common mistake of many girls to waste precious shillings by not purchasing it in a good width. Casement cloth and cotton crepe are usually very wide, but muslin varies. The cheaper kinds aro so narrow that they sometimes will not make a simple shirt sleeve without a join. Zephyr is narrow, of course. It will not make kimono blouses or one-piece skirts; but it will make very nice five or seven-go-red skirts, and blouses with inset sleeves. Linen is a little wider than Zephyr. It will make three-gored sldrts; but it will not, as a rule, make blouses that are cut all in one piece. Nun’s veiling is nearly always cheapest when bought in "double width" for the single width is as narrow as zephyr. Flannel and wincey are moderately wide, but flannelette is usually rather narrow.