In buying a working dress, look for strong articles, which are of a dark colour and which will not fade badly.
In purchasing articles for dresses to wear to church, or for visiting, do not get light and expensive silks which soon soil, and become useless. In choosing a silk dress, especially a black one, which is apt to be injured by the dye, get several samples first. Then take these pieces and double them up and rub the edges of the creases against a carpet. You will find that some wear off much sooner than the rest, and the one that bears this trial best, will wear the longest.
You may be sure that every person of good taste and good judgment will admire and respect you a great deal more, if you dress neat and plain, than if you put on fine and showy articles, that are suitable only for persons who have wealth. It is only persons of weak minds, or great ignorance of propriety, who would admire such extravagant and showy articles, as I am sorry to see, often worn by persons who earn a dollar or two a week by the labour of their hands.
There is often much want of economy too, in regard to the making and mending of dresses. It is no difficult matter to learn to make a frock, and it saves a great deal of expense. To do this, get a mantuamaker to fit and baste a frock for you, and _not to sew it_. Then take this, and first rip out a sleeve, and iron it out, and cut out a newspaper pattern of it. Then baste up the sleeve and fit it just as it was before, except do not set it into the arm-hole.
Then rip out one half the back, and one half the fore body, iron them out, and cut out patterns. If the fore body has the outside gathered or pleated on to the lining, cut out a pattern, both of the outside and lining. Notice how deep the seams are, and prick them into the pattern, or make a crease to show where they should be. Restore the back and fore body to their places, and baste in the sleeve. Then take some cheap stuff, and cut out the sleeves and waist by these patterns, and fit them like the dress you are imitating, and make the skirt by the pattern also.
After this, you will find little trouble in making another dress by these patterns.
When sleeves begin to wear out, they are made to last much longer, by ripping out and changing them. So the skirt of a silk frock, will last much longer by ripping it from the waist, and moving it so that the front breadth goes to one side, and the places of all the breadths are changed. In doing this, the slit behind must be sewed up, and a new one made.