Sempstress

This is a very simple chemise pattern.  It won’t win you any points for historical authenticity, but it’s a really great, “feel good” sort of introduction to pattern drafting. Historically, linen items (including chemises and smocks) were made by home seamstresses because of their relatively simple cut and construction.  To draft a simple chemise, you really only need to be able to sort out a couple of rectangles. Read the rest of this entry »

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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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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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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My life, and probably yours, gentle reader, would be much simplified if, perchance, our predecessors of the fifteenth century had taken a few moments to write a book on their patterning practices.  Alas, they did not.  Nor did our predecessors of the sixteenth, seventeenth, or eighteenth centuries, gosh darn them.  I can’t tell you that I know how they did it, either.  (Sad, but true: though I freely admit to lying whenever it’s convenient, I’m basically an honest girl.)  What I can do is share the method I’ve worked out for my own use over the years.  Who’s in?  ;)

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I made my first Elizabethan corset back in the dark ages of internet time, when it was still pretty common to ask Real Live Humans(tm) how to do things.  I got instructions that were relatively simple – a bust, a waist, divide by two, draw some lines, and presto-change-o, a corset pattern.  It’s the method that had always worked for the lady who gave me the info.  For me, it was a spectacular failure – too tight, too high in back, and completely uncomfortable to wear.  I blamed it on my generally costume-clue-impaired state.  But was there something else going on, that could result in two people having completely different luck with the same pattern draft?

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The Neck to Waist Length is to the back of the body what the Nape to Waist Length is to the front: the basic measurement of the back of the body.  If you’re hoping to make a fitted garment work in back, the Neck to Waist and Neck to Shoulder Lengths are what you need.

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The Nape to Waist Length measurement is, basically, the length of material needed to cover the front of the body from the bottom of the neck down to the waist.  It is a crucial to take this measurement correctly if one has any hope of drafting a bodice that fits correctly over the bust without riding up at the waist. Nape to Bustline Length tells us where the bust line is situated on the torso, and is also crucial to drafting patterns.

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The Neck to Shoulder Length is crucial to making shifts, jackets, bodices, doublets, and basically any other garment with a fitted shoulder and/or a sleeve that sits at the point of the shoulder.  If your Neck to Shoulder Length is off, your finished garments will always look droopy-in-the-shoulder (too long) or have that entirely unflattering Ack!-my-sleeves-are-attacking-my-head effect (too short).  The first case, the drop shoulder, comes in and out of fashion, but the second is pretty universally regarded as a bad idea….

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The Neck measurement is used in fitting any garment or accessory meant to sit closely around, or upon, the neck: collared shirts, gorgets, doublets, chokers, and early ruffs, to name a few.

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