Another in between but the illustrations are very clear- not a drafting system but how to alter patterns and also a handy guide on how to adjust a corset and making your own bust form (hint making a fitted lining and put over a standard form- hen pad to fit. Good instructions on stay tapes to prevent stretch.)
pdf now!!!!! OMG!!!! i LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOVE this book. I use the pattern diagram for my Victorian bodices and it talks about things totally not thought of. Like how to smooth the layers of the bodice from under the side of the bust to over, and then pin the fronts to shape. This is because the lining won’t stretch as much as say a wool shell and this makes the fabrics work together.
It also talks about feather boning which is actually made from feather quills!
A word about perfect systems of cutting, which will do away with any necessity for trying-on, may not be out of place: every dressmaker hopes to find one, and learns system after system in the vain endeavour. If such a thing were possible, tailors would have discovered it before this ; the costliness of the material they work upon, and the difficulty of making alterations upon firm cloth, as compared with soft dress materials, would ensure their straining every nerve to master knowledge so very desirable and essential ; and the really marvellous fitting without trying-on which is done by many dressmakers as well as tailors would seem to declare that the knowledge has been mastered ; but those same tailors and dressmakers know that the risk of alteration being required has always to be faced, in spite of careful measuring, of a pattern bodice at hand to compare with, and of the most minute care having been taken with every step of the work from first to last. It is well for less experienced workers to be very careful and painstaking, and not to expect too much from the cutting only. Perfect cutting must be followed by perfect making-up if everything is to be perfect throughout, and such perfection cannot be ensured as a matter of course to every worker, be she clever and experienced or altogether otherwise, simply by the cutting-out.
The book is really stuffed full of information, and really is my go to for late 19thC bodices.
Full of how to’s for construction, including how to use gathers and
When there is a great deal of material to gather into a small compass, the gathering stitch has to be discarded, the intervals between the stitches being too wide to sew across. Then the material is evenly pleated up and sewed as pleated to the belt, shown in the uncompleted portion. The advantage of this gathering over real pleats is that the gathered pleats are upright, and the material below hangs freely, while pleats are sewed flatly into the belt and confine the material more.
pg 38
Narry a comment about these being cartridge pleats at all. Because they aren’t, if anthing hanging pleats would be more accurate.
What distinguishes the couture garment from a ready-to-wear piece is the handwork functioning not as luxe augmentation, but as a capability intrinsic to the garment.
Sums up far better why I do stick with my byline. I am not interested is ostentation for the sake of it. I love looking at the tiny, tiny, half mm stitches of vintage garments. Not just because it is aesthetically pleasing but because I know how difficult it is to alter a line of stitches made that way, which means there has to be absolute commitment to the work. You can’t just seam rip, you are as likely to rip your fabric. If not more.
So some of the costume list of this blog post title is buried in several pdfs I’ll try and share over the next few weeks. There is a goldmine of archived tailoring and dressmaking manuals out there, full of techniques half lost. There will be a bias towards construction because it has been so undervalued by the public and by academia alike.
