Ebenezer Butterick - Processes and Patents

Processes and Patents

The process that the Buttericks eventually settled on called for the corrected, graded master patterns to be made into thin cardboard templates. These were placed on a stack of tissue paper and cut around with a sharp knife; after all the pieces of each pattern were cut out, the tissue paper pieces were sorted, folded together and labeled with an image of the garment and brief instructions. Butterick offered precut patterns of this type until the late 1940s, when they began to produce uncut, printed patterns (as sold today). The patterns were offered one size to a package until the 1980s, when slower sales made "multisized" patterns (which had several different sizes in the same package) more cost effective.

At first, the pieces were not marked and no pattern layout was provided, leaving it up to the sewer to decide which piece was the collar, which the sleeve, etc. In the late 1890s, the company invented a method of identifying each piece (by means of a letter marked on it in a pattern of small holes), which was patented in 1899. Around 1905, the packaging of the patterns was changed to an envelope rather than a pasted label, which gave more room for description and sewing instructions, including the first layout charts. As the 1910s wore on it became clear that home sewers wanted more detailed instructions than the envelope surface could accommodate, so a separate instruction sheet was included (named the "Deltor", a contraction of DELineaTOR, after Butterick's popular magazine), which was patented in 1919.