Sewing a Lutterloh Pattern
As most buyers/collectors of pre-loved knitting or sewing machines know, often when you get a machine you are given a collection of assorted odds and ends along with it. Pieces for other machines, random thread, bobbins, old elastic – anything that may have been associated with the machine in question. With one of my acquisitions, I can’t remember which at this point, I was given this box:
At the time I had no idea what it was, but at some point I opened it and figured out it is a pattern drafting system made by Lutterloh. I put it aside, and hadn’t looked at it much until recently when I decided I wanted to finally try making something from the book. I have settled on the pants on the right lady here, pattern #225.
Through a lot of googling, and reading, and more googling, I have learned that this pattern was included in supplement 173, released sometime in 1984. Trust me, if you saw the rest of these patterns you would believe they are from the ’80s. I feel like either of these gals could be walking around comfortably in 2024 though, no? Maybe with a few details changed? The most recent patterns I have in there date from 1986, so these are 40 years old. Kind of fun to look at what people were sewing for themselves while I was running around in diapers. I have a LOT of questions about the wedding dress with leg-o-mutton sleeves, but I know it was a really interesting time for wedding gowns.
Anyways I have gotten as far as drawing the pattern, but regrettably there are absolutely zero instructions included for actually sewing the garments. Not designed for the beginner, I guess, or maybe for the beginner in days gone by that actually had people around them to help. Confusingly there are no belt loops mentioned or included in the pattern, but when you look at another drawing that uses these pants as the base, there do seem to be belt loops, and the “belt” actually looks like it’s attached to the waist? And the belt has a button on it that isn’t anywhere in the pattern. OH, and it has a fly but doesn’t seem to indicate a zipper? So, I don’t really know what I’m doing but I’m going to try to figure it out. I figure the fly can’t be that hard to figure out, zipper or otherwise. I need to look at some more Lutterloh posts online to figure out if there are people sewing anything similar to these that can shed some light on how they are constructed.
On the whole, the pattern drawing process was reasonably simple, if not exactly, well, exact. Depending on how hard you pull on the measuring tape, you might get a different measurement each time you measure a particular dot. Also, the rubber or plastic in the tape might have started to degrade or something because that tape has THE WORST chemically/awful smell. I was gagging. I might take the little scale thing off and try to attach it to a new measuring tape.
So far I’m enjoying this foray into the golden rule system of pattern drafting. I’ll post again as I get further in the process, and if anyone has any Lutterloh pants construction tips for me in the meantime, please share!
