The first commercially produced sewing patterns were designed in the mid-1800s by an American milliner named Ellen Curtis Demorest. With her husband, William Jenning Demorest, she founded a company to bring au courant French fashions to the United States via sewing. To market these latest European styles and her patterns of them, the couple launched a magazine called “Madame Demorest’s Mirror of Fashion” in 1860. But American tailor...Continue Reading