It’s a Leach-Way catalogue, a British company that seems to have been making patterns from the 1930s. You can find them now and then on eBay. All these patterns are for bust size 40″ to 50″, about a 14-24 in today’s clothing sizes. And they are about 5281% more flattering and lovely than nearly everything on offer in the plus-size market today, even in modern pattern catalogues. There are plenty of dresses, with complementary suits, blouses, skirts and coats. If you’re handy with patterns it shouldn’t be too hard to figure out how to construct them, especially if you have a few vintage patterns already. You can always trace and scale up a vintage pattern, too. Here’s a very useful tutorial: How to re-size a pattern.

I’ve put the whole catalogue into a PDF, it’s 27MB. A few pages are a little blurry on one corner or tilted off-center – sorry about that, but the disintegrating condition of the catalogue made it hard to scan properly. Download it here: Leach-Way Outsize pattern catalogue.

Here’s an ad for Pabst Blue Ribbon beer, date early-mid 1940s, I think, going by the pageboy hairstyle. A time when beer ads featured classy lassies wearing more than a bikini! (Artist placed the lady sitting way too far down the harp, incidentally. And sitting on the wrong side of it! Sorry, that’s my musician pedantry at work. )

Not sure exactly what this one’s about, but possibly hand lotion, as the copy reads “Reason for calluses on slim hands – harp playing”. Again sometime in the 1940s, and this time she’s on the correct side of the harp and at the right height!

Here’s one for Bufferin for arthritis! 1950s.

And lastly for today, the harp being used for its connotations of elegance in this ad for wallpaper and furnishing fabric by Sanderson of England (click to embiggen). This was from a 1952 Australian House and Garden magazine.

There’s no date given, but since it’s all about updating your tired old dark wood Art Deco and Victorian furniture with which you have Made Do with during the war, and there’s no modernist furniture in the pictures, I’ll take a guess at 1947-49. I found it in the National Library along with a few other interesting and similar promotional publications. Since colour photocopies cost something ridiculous like $2 a page, and taking a scanner to the library is fraught with difficulty, I used my iPhone to take photos of the pages. I’ve edited it together into a PDF which you can download: The Colorful Home (PDF 38MB).

There are plenty of before-and-after illustrations for all rooms of the house, as well as your exterior and garden. Here are the afters!

A living room: all the dark wood has been painted in "Biscuit", and the furniture modernised by cutting down the legs and removing frames.

Mission brown Victorian furniture and fittings painted in new "Llama Grey"(!) gloss, and the linoleum painted bright royal blue.

The bare concrete floor has been painted "Grotto Green" as has the window frame and door; the furniture is red-trimmed now; and the walls are an ever-popular bright cream.

A nursery scheme designed for a girl, with "Pale Orchid" walls and "Cambridge Blue" enamel paint on all the furnishings. Venetian blinds were advertised as healthful, because you could control "dangerous drafts" so the baby wouldn't catch a chill.

A very pretty little kitchen in a classic 40s colour scheme! Yet more cream paint, with "Oriental Red" trim, and "Burnt Sand" painted lino. The curtains are "snowy white muslin with red coin spots". I want a shiny red sifter like that!

The large kitchen, with walls in "Buttercream", furniture in "Lettuce Green", and floor in "Forest Green". Check out the Cornish ware crockery, and aluminium canister set.

There's that cream paint again! even on the bathtub exterior. The stool is "Marigold", the floor a grey-blue, and the shower curtains and mat have a seagull motif with black trim!

The "oppressive stained furniture becomes delightfully modern" when painted in glossy cream! The walls are "Distant Blue" (a soft turquoise).

Home sweet home - with "Mecca Green" and "Deep Cream".