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Category: Pattern Drafting

Printer Friendly Version of the Basic Conic Draft

I realize that instructions are far more helpful when you can print them out and put them on the worktable while you’re using them.  I also realize that pages upon pages of full color photos do not a happy printer make.  I’ve made a not-so-chatty (yes, I actually can edit) PDF version of the Basic Conical Draft directions, redone with black&white line art.

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Printer Friendly Version of Basic Conical Draft directions…

I realize that instructions are far more helpful when you can print them out and put them on the worktable while you’re using them.  I also realize that pages upon pages of full color photos do not a happy printer make.  I’ve made a not-so-chatty (yes, I actually can edit) PDF version of the Basic Conical Draft directions, redone with black&white line art.

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The Basic Conical Torso Block (Part 2)

Now that I’ve got all the photography done, it’s time to pick up where we left off in The Basic Conical Torso Block (Part 1).  We’re completing a basic torso block that we can use for the simplified, conical torsos popular in Renaissance, Elizabethan, Jacobean, Pompadour, Colonial, and all other eras between the Sixteenth and Eighteenth centuries.  (She says, throwing as many keywords into one sentence as humanly possible.)  One block, three hundred years of fashion – how can you lose?

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The Basic Conical Torso Block (Part 1)

For several hundred years, beginning where the High Middle Ages met the Renaissance and continuing through the eve of the French Revolution, fashion treated the female torso as something of an inconvenience.  The breasts were flattened, first by bands of wool or linen, later by corsetry and boned bodices. The sides of the body were straightened and the tum controlled.  The torso became a conic shape.  In some decades, like the 1590s, 1690s, and 1780s, it’s a very long cone.  In others, like the 1640s, it’s a very short cone that disappears into skirts below the bust.  During these times, a very basic conical torso block can be used as a basis creating custom patterns.

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