Figure 1.--This is a photoshoot at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia from the fall 1989 issue of 'Sew Beautiful' showcasing embroidery work. A pre-school boy wears shortalls. As is often the case with shortalls he is pictured wearing Ebglish closed toe-sandals. A slightly older boy wears bib-front overalls. Another pre-school boy wears a Peter Pan blouse. The garments have fun embroidered work with appealing fire trucks and tractors.

Sew Beautiful is an heirloom sewing publication. The creative personality behind Sew Beautiful is Martha Campbell Pullen, A Martha Stewart-type figure. She and her staff have helped turned heirloom sewing into a popular modern hobby. She began her business in a small shop in Huntsville, Alabama (1981). She began importing laces and fabrics to sell mail-order, both wholesale and retail. Tgen she set up the Martha Pullen School of Art Fashion, which now attracts more than 600 women to Huntsville twice annually. She then began conducting Martha Pullen classes in Australia, England, Sweden, Canada and New Zealand. She has also held mini-schools in 43 states. She then began publishing Sew Beautiful Publication (1987). It quickly became one of the most popular American heirloom sewing magazines. The corporate structure is that the magazine is part of the Martha Pullen Co., a subsidiary of Hoffman Media, LLC. Martha Pullen Company became a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Birmingham-based Hoffman Media, LLC (2004). the merger freed Martha’s time to devote more time to the long-time dream of sharing her extensive collection of heirloom garments around the world. She began publishing The Vintage Collection of Martha Pullen series of books (2005). As with other heirloom sewing magazines, there is a focus on as the company says to create "classics both new and old to create for your family's treasure chest." Many of the patterns are quite demanding, but there is an attempt to provide patterns that can be achieved by home sewers at all skill levels involving both machine and hand sewing. In addition to garmentys there are patterns for intricate needlework, impressiuve embrodery, and delicate smocking. The magazine specializes in classic styles, "both new and old to create for your family's treasure chest." The focus is on women's and girl's clothing, but there are also charming patterns for boys, mostly younger boys. Often they are garments like shortalls, longalls, bib-dront shorts, and blouses than can be smocked or decorated with embroidery work. The detail here from the fall 1989 issue is a good example (figure 1).

A reader tells us a little bit about the magazine. "The magazine wasn't selling anything. They were just showing how, in thie case here, how little boys could be fasionably dressed. Some of the patterns for longalls actually had do it yourself pattern making inside the magazine as a sheet of paper fot home sewers. In all the Creative Needle and Sew Beautiful magazines I have seen, there is a list of both advertisers or companies providing fashions for the articles . Also the pattern companies were listed so home sewers could order the patterns. So mothers could either purchase the fashions or buy the patterns. Fashionable compasnies like Mollie Jane Taylor were listed and the mother contacted them directly. So they weren't really selling it, they were more like showing stuff and giving ideas to moms who read the magazine about how they could dress up their little boys and girls. Just basically planting ideas in their mind how to fashionably dress children for say, for Easter, or Christmas. And if the moms wanted to make those clothes, then they could always contact whoever designed them or made them (the list would usually be in the back pages of the magazine issue).