Pin Money!

I had the opportunity to take a week off work and spend a short vacation around home.  I had a very restful week, but at the same time managed to get a few small projects completed.

One of the projects I managed to complete was to go through my hundreds of patterns and cull out the ones that I no longer think I will ever attempt.  I have been collecting patterns off the Internet for about 15 yrs and believe me when I say I had a lot of patterns of every kind.  Some were in binders, most were not, so I took a few days went through every one of them, and in the process discovered that many of them had been printed more than once.
I got rid of a garbage bag full of paper - I'm not proud of my waste, but it is what it is.  Every pattern is now in a binder, and the binders are all labeled and put back in some sense of order on the shelves.

In this mess I found some pretty neat old Workbasket magazines.  Remember those?  One was from 1953.  It was great reading about the lives of women back then.  Certainly this magazine was dedicated to the very busy house wife.  There were recipes, crafts, sewing tips. gardening sections, home canning sections and just about anything you can imagine a homemaker in that era would be interested in.

One particular article caught my eye.  It was about how homemakers in the day made their Pin Money!

Pin Money?  You mean to tell me that women had to raise money for pins for sewing?

Pin money was spending money - extra money used for things that a woman might want or need that were not covered under the household budget.  Most women back then were given a spending allowance from their husbands which was to be used for groceries, and the necessities.  Pin money was for those non-essentials that every woman needs from time to time.

I guess my craft money would be considered Pin Money.  The money I make on my crafts most often goes right back into more craft supplies, or yarn, or whatever I want to spend it on.  It is not used for groceries it is my "mad" money.  I think I will call it my "Pin Money" from now on.

One woman in the story sewed aprons and sold them at church bazaars.  She had aprons for children and adult sizes from small to extra large.   Some were bib aprons, some half aprons.  She charged .25 for the children's aprons and up to .75 for the adult aprons.

My how times have changed!  Can you imagine purchasing material, making the apron, which I'm sure had some pretty trims etc, and only charging .25 to.75?

I set this particular magazine aside with the intention of reading through it from cover to cover.  I have not seen it since.  I fear it may have somehow ended up in the bag of paper that went to the trash.  I am sick at the thought of loosing such a great glimpse of past.  I still hope it turns up somewhere in my craft room so I can share some more of the stories with you.

In the meantime I have a few other things to show you in the days ahead.