My sewing library is filled with vintage sewing books, magazine and sewing supplements because I love and enjoy working with vintage sewing patterns.  That’s not to say my shelves don’t contain new books, because they do, I just believe it’s important to have a good mixture of both.  Plus, you can’t really work with vintage sewing patterns if you don’t have vintage sewing books.  

Honorable mention for a much overlooked book:  The Vogue Sewing Book.

I browse the the Internet regularly looking for vintage sewing books, I’m always amazed that eBay continually has a pretty good assortment of The Vogue Sewing Books on the cheap.  It really is a great must-have vintage sewing book and extremely comprehensive. 

Although Clothing Construction is one of the best vintage sewing books of all time, The Vogue Sewing Book is definitely in the top ten.

Here are some of my favorite vintage sewing books

• Clothing for Women:  Selection, Design, Construction:  A Practical Manual for School and Home.
• Clothing Construction
• Reader’s Digest Complete Guide to Sewing
• Singer Sewing Book
• Coates & Clark’s Sewing Book
• Simplicity’s Simply The Best Sewing Book
• Sewing Made Easy
• The Complete Book of Sewing
• How to Make Clothes that Fit and Flatter
• The Vogue Sewing Book
• McCall’s New Complete Book of Sewing and Dressmaking

Plus, while not technically sewing books I have an assortment of vintage fashion and sewing magazines and supplements, which go well with my collection.  Magazine and sewing supplements depict what vintage clothing actually looked like, thereby providing me with a better ideal on what types of fabrics and notions are best to use in creating vintage fashions.  Very helpful and no vintage sewing library should be without them.

For more information

My favorite list of newer sewing books

Let’s talk sewing book collections by the numbers