Drape A Young Woman’s Bodice Pattern,
1850-1865

CLASS DESCRIPTION

In this workshop, you’ll learn to drape your own custom bodice pattern, draft customized sleeves, and construct both low and high bodices for the adolescent girl’s figure, 1850-1865.

Young women go through tremendous growth and changes during the teenage years. Young women are becoming more and more active in living history and historic clothing as a hobby. And yet, no one publishes patterns to suit their figure needs. After this workshop, you won’t need patterns again, but will instead be able to drape and construct your own patterns to suit individual figures.

Direct draping of the pattern skips the flat-drafting stage, and takes you straight to testing a basic bodice pattern. It is a step-by-step process anyone can learn. The techniques in this workshop will also work for draping adult women’s bodices, though we will be discussing the particular needs of the adolescent woman’s figure, ages 12-20, including growth-accommodation strategies from the era that are just as useful today.

Direct draping of the pattern skips the flat-drafting stage, and takes you straight to testing a basic bodice pattern. It is a step-by-step process anyone can learn. The techniques in this workshop will also work for draping adult women’s bodices, though we will be discussing the particular needs of the adolescent woman’s figure, ages 12-20, including growth-accommodation strategies from the era that are just as useful today.

You will need basic hand or machine sewing skills to get the most out of this workshop, and either the young woman herself for draping and fitting, or a body-duplicate dress form. Ideally, the bodice should be draped over historic supportive undergarments (chemise and corset or stays), but a corset is not a prerequisite for the workshop.

Instructor:
Elizabeth Stewart Clark
Costume Historian and Patternmaker

 Register for class

 Elizabeth's Bio

 Class Syllabus

 Cost for Class only: $75

 The Class Textbook must be purchased from the instructor at The Sewing Academy

 See Class Schedule for semester dates.

 Duration of class: 4 lessons. Self paced.

Costume Classroom is a division of The Costume Gallery, copyright 1996-2006.

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