Pattern edition

I see we've gained a couple of new followers and the stats when it comes to how many people read each entry are increasing which is nice as it does take a bit of time to put together an entry here.
As I'm sure you're  aware the current trading conditions for many retailers are not good, something that takes me on to the first part of this weeks entry and as a result you'll have seen quite a number of empty stores in your town and city centres, some of which may go back a fair number of decades.
Well one company I first encountered when I was first exploring what learned was the world of Adult Little Girls was called Rosemary Woods whose premises were only a few miles away in the former Mill Town of Congleton, Cheshire.
While much of what they made was targeted at subset of the transgendered community mainly what the natives here call Crossdressers (or transvestite) who were into things such as "sissy maid" attire such as maid dresses, frilly knickers all with considerable lashings of silk and lace, they did do quite a bit of made to measure school uniform such as traditional gymslips (for North Americans a Tunic see  below), games skirts and tops.

Can anyone imagine me in one  with box pleats? :D
I bought a number of garments from them in the late 90's through mid 2000's finding them to be well cut, easy to re-stitch if needed and compared to people such as Transformation pretty reasonable value for money.
Unfortunately after 29 years of trading they've closed down for good which really is rather a shame.

Sometimes despite what you may of read in the newspapers over the last ten days or ago you can stumble across some really nice things such as a series of images by Mary Beth when you're just browsing.
Her inspiration seems to be classic children's adventure stories putting  a depiction of part of them in a washed out background to her main image like her with have scenes from the Alice Adventures behind her creation, Alex in Wonderland.
The drawing is haunting me actually as I look at the dress with the puffed up sleeves the full skirt with petticoat and then look back at myself thinking could I wear this maybe at some kind of gathering?