Neue Mode these days: print-on-demand (looks like)

Unrelated to anything I'm currently working on, I tried ordering a few printed Neue Modes¹ while Sewingpatterns.com² had a rare sale on them last month.

My guess is these come from the same digital sources as their downloads do. I don't know how the originals would have been digitized (if they didn't start out that way), but just to see, I tried ordering patterns of various ages—the site has a few that look to be from the late 70s or so, many from the 80s, and possibly the complete catalogue from the 90s–2000s. It seems the image quality for the newer ones is slightly higher, but not by a lot. They've all got at least a bit of fuzziness, just like downloads from Printsew—not that impressive, though not unusable. I haven't yet attempted to check whether they're printed at the correct scale. I should hope so.

The paper is fairly heavy, kind of like old Kwik-Sews' but maybe not as smooth and flexible. Instructions aren't included; you have to download the PDF of them yourself from the site. Since it's possible to do that without ordering, I think it's well worth checking if the instructions for a particular pattern are to your liking before you decide whether to buy. Some of their oldest patterns have only German instructions.

The patterns are placed in large white envelopes with the original envelope image printed on, usually scaled up slightly, with the sharpness suffering as a result. Since the pattern paper is not very compactly folded, nor folded to match the size of the envelope, the result is rather bulky, similar to what I've seen from some small indie outfits.

All in all, I think the quality is fair. I'd prefer it over having to print out a download, myself, but it certainly doesn't match the polished presentation of the old Neue Modes.³

Are they worth full price? Well, how much do you really need a specific pattern? The reason I've gone to the trouble to get Neue Modes in the past is the quality of the drafting, variety of styles, and good construction methods, particularly for things like coats—those have the most complete set of pieces for interfacing and lining I've seen in home sewing patterns. The pants fit is similar to Burda's, and the sleeve cap shapes are (if anything) better, with a pronounced swoopy curve in front. The instructions are also similar to Burda's, which may be a dealbreaker for some.

I've now collected more Neue Modes than I care to admit, and these may be the last I buy. If you want to try this brand but aren't set on any particular pattern, you can still get some deadstock originals from some other sources. I've had good experiences with The Sewing Place. There are also some here and there on various resale sites, with (unsurprisingly) more being available in Germany, where they originated.

¹ Backstory: Neue Mode stopped designing and printing new patterns about 2007-8. I don't know what exactly happened then, but sometime thereafter, it looks as though Sewingpatterns.com got the rights to reprint their patterns and to sell them as downloads.
² People have had, shall we say, mixed experiences with Sewingpatterns.com. I've never had problems getting print orders fulfilled, eventually, but they aren't very communicative to say the least, and I wouldn't want to order from them if I had a deadline. The site is also not too professional-looking and hasn't had its design updated in the past several years, if ever—although I sometimes find site design updates gratuitous, this one's gone long enough that I have to wonder what else about the site hasn't been updated. They take PayPal; I would strongly suggest using it, if you do order from them.
³ In the past year or so, "new" Neue Modes have come out. I don't know who drafts them, and since the original Neue Mode drafting was what I appreciated, I haven't tried any of these others. You can tell them apart by their different instructions, which lack diagrams and seem rather Lekala-like.

Bra-makers Supply colorways

This is not related to anything I'm currently working on, but I've been meaning to write it up for a while.

Bra-makers Supply is a (the?) Canadian online vendor of lingerie supplies. I've yet to buy any large amount from them, but one of their main features is they have certain colors for which they sell matching fabrics, elastics, and notions.

This addresses a major problem with home sewing in general: we usually don't have our notions dyed to match; we just have to choose from whatever standardized, or miscellaneous, colors someone has decided to manufacture. This is an even worse problem with bras, because they have so many components made of different materials. It's easy to get stuck with near-miss color matches, plain black or white, or contrasting colors when you'd rather use only one.

Here is Bra-makers' Duoplex swatch set:

Duoplex is one of their nonstretch fabrics that you'd use for cups. They do swatch sets for other fabrics too; I just got this one because it had the widest range of colors available. (Unfortunately, this is photographed in artificial light, and the brightness and clarity of most of the colors doesn't come across.)

Keep in mind, the range of colors for which elastic and closures are available, at time of writing anyway, is much more limited: pink, a couple beige shades, dark brown, ivory, white, red, and black, and I think just recently they've added fuchsia and turquoise. I personally am not a big fan of all the brights and clear pastels, and wish they'd do more of the muted or dark colors (they've got a dark plum, dark green, two grays, and two sorts of navy, but no matching notions for them). Still, being able to get color-matched, more-or-less continuously available fabric and notions at all is a big deal.

Anyway, the other nice thing Bra-makers does is list Pantone numbers, at least for their standard fabrics and elastics (not so much for their laces). If you have the Fashion & Home deck, although matching fabric to paper is not ideal, you can look those up. And while I think they've tried their best to match colors to numbers, in some cases the Pantone deck just doesn't have a great match.

Here the Pink is a decent match for the Pantone color they chose (right below it). The Mid-tone Grey, not so much: the fabric definitely has more of a red-violet cast. But looking through the deck, I could see that was arguably the best match available. The White is a real optic white that is brighter than anything in the deck, though newer decks may have a better match than older ones, as they can yellow or dull with age. Anyway, my point is: this is good enough to get a general idea, but if you're going to try to match anything to Bra-makers' colors, and you're as picky about it as I am, you're best off getting a swatch set. The other advantage is it's much lighter and easier to carry around.

One of these days I want to write up a big comparison of several lingerie supply vendors. Generally speaking, I would say Bra-makers is good for relatively unadorned bras, and they consider a big range of sizes. In comparison, some of the European vendors have much prettier lace, but none of them do the custom-dye thing as far as I know, and their fabrics may need some backing to be supportive enough for the larger sizes. More on all this later.