 Hello, I'm Rebecca Olds. Welcome back to my studio here at Times Smith Dress History. A few years ago I made a video about drafting a stays pattern using the ARC method that was published in Patterns of Fashion 5 and developed by Luca Costugliolo for the School of Historical Dress, who published that book. In today's video, this is part one of a three-part series that not only shows you what I'm doing, but explains how I'm doing it and why I'm doing it. It is the same style of stays, the 1760s strapless, fully-boned stays that are in Patterns of Fashion 5, project number 24 on pages 100 to 103. For this draft that I'm doing, I took measurements over my friend Sarah, who was already wearing a pair of stays that she had made that fit her fairly well, but they were of a later style, the Augusta stays that are kind of 1775 to 1790 approximately. I took Sarah's measurements using a physical measure, not a measuring tape like this with numbers on it in increments like an inch or a centimeter, but rather a physical measure using a strip of paper with no markings whatsoever on it until I mark the measurement that I've taken. This is the kind of measuring system that was used in the 18th century by tailors and staymakers for pattern drafting, involves getting a physical measure. In the period, they would mark the measurements taken by using a pair of scissors and snip into the paper in various ways to create different codes indicating whether it was a length that they were taking or a circumference or whether it was part of the body or whether it was a limb, arm, or leg. I did not do that in this case. I used a pencil to actually mark where I'd taken the measure and then an identification of what measure it was that I was taking. You'll see me using this tape in this series of videos as I go about drafting the pattern. This draft took me approximately perhaps four hours to draft, split over two days from beginning to end, including all of the converting of the master pattern into separate pieces that could be laid out or cut out on fabrics. I've split that into three. This is part one of a three-part series of three videos in total. I've taken a pretty light approach to editing so that you get a sense of the time it takes and the flow. Some of that is sort of mental. You can see me kind of thinking and musing out loud about the process that I'm doing. That does mean that each of these videos is a bit longer than the YouTube algorithm likes, and I say two fingers up to the algorithm. You may want to save these videos if you don't have time to watch them beginning to end in one sitting. Save them to a playlist or your watch later playlist so that you can come back and finish it at a time that's convenient for you. I do appreciate they're quite long. I will also add to the description below kind of chapters that you can click through to specific sections, particular parts of a video that you want to go back and watch over or to pick up where you left off the last time that you were watching. So I hope that's helpful. At various points during these videos, I talk about how stays should feel and how they should fit and where they sit on the body. So I hope that's helpful in your own projects. I also talk about adjustability and the sizing of your stays. It's pretty common these days to use the width of the lacing gap in the back of the stays to account for weight gain or weight loss. I don't think that's the way it was done in the period from my studies and experimentation. So I will talk about what I think would work better than that. And the spoiler alert is I don't think it was the back lacing gap. Now part one, Elphor Warnew ends on a little bit of a cliffhanger. But don't worry, part two picks right up where that left off. So hang in there, all will be revealed as we go along. So without further ado, we'll get straight into it. Part one, which is really drafting the basic block for the stays. Determining the lengths and the circumferences and the basic size and shape that these stays are going to take. Okay, the first thing needed is this vertical line. This is basically the frame reference that everything else up and down, front to back will be measured with reference to that line. Now, when working with your piece of paper, make sure that it's large enough. Remember, it only needs to be large enough to map half the body from the center front to the center back. When you put in that vertical line, bear in mind that part of the stays as they get patterned are going to swoop up this way on the back. And they're going to extend to the front more so than at the back. But in apportioning the kind of volume of the body, that kind of midpoint, that midline, roughly running through directly into the underarm, that there's going to be more of the body, the mass of the torso towards the front of the body than to the back. So bearing that in mind, you may choose to position that vertical line just a little bit right of center. And you want to make sure that you've got enough at the bottom and that will then give you scope for drafting the back to extend up this way. So I'm going to have more of this line than I actually need showing here at the top, we'll go ahead and get that right down to the bottom. The next step is to map on the underarm measurement. It is a length measurement. So on a period drafting tape, it would be marked a certain way. I've actually done this with drawing a line, so there's no doubt no one has to interpret a key of the symbols cut into the paper tape. So AM is the line, the length line, a vertical line from the underarm to the waist. I am going to place the waist more or less halfway along here, so that I've got room to work with above the waist and below the waist. So let's just go here. Now, I don't exactly know how long that line is that I'm going to need, so I'm going to extend it very generously just in case. So that we're going to refer to as the waist. So measuring up from that to the notch at the top of the tape, and I line that up, comes to here. That will now be the underarm, and I will try not to obscure this too much with my head as I get in there and line that up. OK, now as noted in Patterns of Fashion 5, that is the top of the underarm. And proportionately, then, where the bust line falls is relatively low from that top point towards the waist. If you look on page 155, it uses Smith-Covered Staves from an earlier period as a point of comparison, a garment for comparison, noting that 18th century staves, especially this style from the 1760s, does sit quite high up under the arm. So I'm going to want to be careful that I don't end up with the bust line drawing too high. OK, we have a slight hiccup here in that one of the measurements that I'm sure I took is not marked on the tape. However, this is not absolutely essential in this particular case because I measured overstays that already fit, that she has that fit well. Stays that are for a slightly later era. So we're doing a bit of time traveling here. In the period, it would not have been unusual for a staymaker to be taking measurements over a customer's current pair of stays with a view to making stays for newer style of stays. So a woman who had been wearing fully-boned strapless stays of the 1760s and into the 70s, and then as the silhouette began to change, she might be wearing that pair of fully-boned stays while being measured for the newer style, a little bit softer with a little bit more pronounced bust shape. In this case, we're working from the reverse. However, fortunately, the pair of later period stays, which are from the Augusta pattern, were being worn fairly, fairly straight front, not a great deal of so-called thrust. So I think from that, the fact that I took these measurements overstays that already had her breast tissue in a somewhat compressed and supported position, that I can take an educated guess based on my experience on where that natural bust line would be without being shaped or manipulated by a later style of stays. So I'm going to calculate this measurement of AP, which is defined as the length from the bust at bust level, so somewhere on this line, from the bust level to the waist. So you would take that AP measurement, starting from the waist, and ideally have a mark on your tape to measure up to find AP. Now, the proportions of the stays pattern on page 155 and patterns of fashion five, it looks like on that pattern that the bust line is found at a little higher than one-third of this total line. So I'm going to very quickly determine what the thirds are going to be of this line. It comes out almost exactly 8 inches, so we are looking at perhaps 2 1⁄2, let's see, yeah, 2 1⁄2, 2 1⁄2 is 7 1⁄2 times 3, so actually that will work very nicely at 2 1⁄2 will be just a bit higher from a distance measuring a third of this total distance. So we'll go with that. I think that is a fairly safe guesstimate based on having seen this customer in her later stays that do pretty much put her body in a very similar sort of supported shape as these stays need to. So we will call that bust line. The next step then is to make that apportionment of the mass or size of the body between the front and the back. One of the measurements crucial for determining that is a measurement that's taken across the front of the bust from underarm to underarm, because obviously half of that well then it should be the center front. So I have here the whole of AD is across the entire front of the body from underarm to underarm, which as you can imagine will be bigger than if I had taken that same underarm to underarm from the back. So we have AD as a whole marking here is having been taken across the front and to the underarms and we need that in half. And I believe I have already made that calculation and put it here. It looks like that I may have mistakenly made that calculation from the end of the tape, which is not correct. Yeah, I did in fact do that. Right, so it needs to be here to there. So this is AD. And as you can see, sometimes mistakes are made, but logic can prevail in helping work out exactly what was intended. So here is correct AD and that is the apportionment along the bust, along that bust line to find the center front and it is here. So then we know from taking her entire bust circumference and then you take half of that and that should give you your center front to your center back. Now that's bearing in mind that that measurement was taken in stays. So as a backup and a little bit of a sense check, I also took a measurement of the waist and bust areas without stays on to see how that affects this apportionment. And what we find here is that the midpoint vertical line here along the bust from that to her center back is this and that corrects any distortion of these measurements that may have occurred when taking measurements with her already wearing stays. So we should find that this, let's see, that is seven eighths, eight and seven eighths inches and this is almost exactly the same which gives, does confirm just how much bust compression the stays she has in those stays. I need to have a think on how I wish to address that. But meanwhile, I will also capture the double check. That's from that notch, that yes it is. What we have here will be on her waist from that midline to the back. So we can see that this is going to be based on her natural measurements, pretty realistic for a back line, a center back line. And I am pretty happy with that, knowing the amount of some waist reduction that she has in her current stays. So the next measurement I need to look at is to try to determine the center front point on her waist, her half waist is this. So that's her total half waist and we know what that we can put that there and that here. And as I suspect that she's got quite a lot of reduction in these old stays, we are looking at that six and a quarter. Yeah, she's got a lot of waist reduction going on here. I think because this style of stays is going to require darts and curved seams, we need to account for just how much reduction she is getting. Bearing in mind that her body inside stays is smaller circumference than taking measurements over the entire circumference of her body plus stays that layer. So of course the circumference measures that I'm working with, her body inside is already smaller than the measurements I have because my measurements are taken around the stays as well. Then accounting for the level of reduction, she's quite squishy and she's got very good support in those. So I think that it is entirely realistic to add at least one inch to the front part of the body that the back, having done that, checked that both in stays and without stays on, I'm pretty happy with how that is playing out on paper. But I think her natural body, if I had taken a full set of measurements with a view to a fresh pattern draft with no reference or comparison to other stays, I think that these measurements would be sitting further this way. One other factor in this is that stays when worn and where the parts of the stays need to coincide with parts of the body, the center back is drafted with minimal, if any, lacing gap. I know that it's commonly said that you want a two inch lacing gap. However, the moment you're playing with those pattern pieces, as we see in the X stands and in images, the moment we introduce a bigger gap with changing of weight, which seems to be the rationale behind people who feel there should be a large lacing gap, then that piece begins to sit over a part of the body in particular the flanks over the high hip around on the back that is extremely uncomfortable, if not outright painful. Using a lacing gap at the back or to a lesser degree the front, the back in particular, if that's gonna vary much, then that is going to affect where the stays sit on your body in a way that introduces huge risk of pain. What we see in images is little to no lacing gap in the back. I know that that raises the question of how did people continue wearing one set of stays with fluctuations in weight? I think there's a lot to be said for how the darts in the seams that achieve the waist reduction, they're not uniformly done. The darts are different shaped on each seam. And I think that's where the variation, the forgiveness in the stays are going to work for you. And if someone was going to have a lot of weight fluctuations and needed to keep those pair of stays, for example, if they gained a lot of weight or for whatever reason, could not have a new pair of stays patterned, it makes a lot more sense to me to split a seam that is along the side of the body and side lacing. We do have surviving stays from the period where that has been done. It's usually assumed that that was for the sake of maternity and a swelling belly, but that would also be very sensible for just general weight gain. And then subsequent, perhaps, weight loss as well, but the lacing can be brought back in. But having worn stays day after day, long days in an 18th century setting in a museum, I can vouch for the fact that this panel that's going to be drawn on the back needs to stay exactly there. If I were needing to let out my stays in some way, I'd be going for probably the seam between pieces two and three. I should have this in front. I'm talking about this seam. This seam can be let out a little bit or split open and close with lacing and somewhat on this one, but I would not introduce that here or here. That's my view. I would love an opportunity to put that to the test, but frankly, there are not enough women wearing historical stays in historical settings, leading a life and activities in the same way as our ancestors did in the 18th century for me to basically have a pool of people to run trials on that. But that is my thinking based on actual wear and experience myself and refining my understanding of how stays sit on the body. I also have alongside that thoughts on fit, how they should actually feel when new to be sure that the pattern is correct. And that would be relevant too if you've made a mock-up assessing the fit of the mock-up. I will talk about that a little, another point in this video. Back to this apportionment of front to back. I am going to arbitrarily add two inches. Now remember, we're working with halves, so I really only need to add one inch to the front. Now, the bust is a little trickier. Compression can work a little differently, but I suspect that there is a measurable reduction that she gets in her current stays, perhaps not as squishy as the waist. Breast tissue is different from fat tissue. Considering the shape of the bust actually changes by being uplifted and supported from below in stays, she may well be getting an inch reduction, in which case I will add half an inch to the front on this pattern. Again, this is the bust and we have not drawn the curves in yet. So what we have here at the moment are a midpoint under the arm, under arm line, a bust line, a waistline. We now have a hypothetical and this line is not going to need to match that. That line does not actually extend out in the final pattern. It's more important that I get a long line extending down as far as possible here. Okay, and likewise in the back, that would could usefully intersect with this line. So we will extend that slightly. Okay, so we're going for this. And I know from experience that this needs to be drawn somewhat long. It's going to need to extend quite high there. We're drafting those pattern pieces, so extended it right up to there. Okay, so still to come are arches, determining sort of a high hip, which will help with the drafting of the arcs there. And then apportioning the body further for the four separate pattern pieces. What I've basically done then is altered what's the measurement I'm seeking as of what's on my tape. So I need to sort of retranslate those onto this tape before using this tape to formulate the arcs or the curves. Because remember it's the curves that map out where the stays are actually going to fall points of the body. So those curves need to be the correct measurement. And curves, of course, have a different measurement than a straight line does or it's a different effect. So I need to translate these changes about at half an inch here. So now, AD at the hole, the hole has now got this added bit. And I think we will just translate that here and put AD revised. Okay, and now the waist. That was the original. We've added an inch this way. So this kind of needs to be the revised. And here, so this is AF revised. And this is half AF revised. Let me just check that. Yes, perfect. Now, the effect of these stays need to achieve a certain amount of support and compression, relative, of course, to the actual measurements and size and shape of the body. But we're going to basically draft these curves as they appear in the pattern on this pair of stays. This is hopefully drawn out in this staged drawing. But this can also be double checked against the extant stays themselves. This is number 24 on page. On here. And it's through checking the fullest points of the body when these patterns are joined together. If you were to make a two scale, exactly as they are here, make these patterns and cut them out in paper and join them together so that you get a sense of the 3D shape of these stays. That tells you actually where the relative points of the body, the bust and the waist and the hips are all sitting within that. Now, remember these stays were drafted for an individual. These are not some sort of generic or idealized or standardized pattern. The pattern details, things like the shapes and the length of the skirts. That has to do with the fashion or the style of the stays. But the sizing can be identified through what these look like made up. It gives you a very good sense of the actual size and shape and proportions of the original wearer of these stays. So we are going to put full trust in the staymakers at the period. These are a particularly fine pair of stays. Obviously the staymaker was very skilled. So we're going to put our full trust that he knew what he was doing. As far as his draftsmanship is concerned, that this was the effect that was achieved on a person in the 1760s, 1770s, let's say the third quarter of the 18th century. And so that is the effect we want on a body today drafting. We want to achieve that as reflective of the style, the fashion and the silhouette and the way the clothing over these stays would have been worn. This gives us a sense of what our end goal is that we are seeking to achieve when drafting a pattern such as this on any person regardless of their actual size, shape, dimensions, proportions, et cetera, et cetera. So we're going to go with that arc as well as we can. And then we will measure the actual curve, the line that results to adjust if necessary to determine exactly according to the measurements that we want. Okay. So as far as drafting, I am relying again on some of the proportions of this pattern. And we are looking at a curve, an arc that is going to sit just a bit higher than half of this distance. I'm looking at this relative distance to here. And it would seem that halfway would be approximately here. I want it a bit higher than that, but not a great deal. So if I aim for that, let's see how that will look. I'm going to go just a touch higher. I think I'm going to go with about there. Now that becomes what is, this needs to be parallel. Remember this distance here, here to here, I put that here then the front of the waist arc is going to be here. Now same applies to the back. And you'll notice that that intersection of that arc on that axis is much higher than the front of the bust. So again, I'm looking at the proportions from this horizontal line and this horizontal line. And let's see, that looks like that's about half. So that's about a quarter. It's going to be sitting just above three quarters. So let's see what we have here. Again, we have that under arm measurement that here to here. Here's AM. I'm going to have another since check there. It doesn't hurt to keep checking these things just in case you've inadvertently picked up the wrong line as you're measuring. Okay, I want to make sure these are less of a drop from the horizontal in the back as in the front. So here we've got about two inches. And here I've got one and about three eighths. So that seems like it's fairly proportionate in terms of how that arc is going to compare on this portion of it. And then it transitions to this portion. It's going to drop a bit lower in the center front down in the center back. Does that make sense? Okay. We want this sitting as close to that line as possible and not too abrupt. I may need to take a bracelet off. And likewise here, it just needs to be pretty soft. Okay, I'm just using this to track the deviation to make sure that the stronger arc or angle of the curve does in fact sit up here before it drops away. So I'm aiming for this. You notice I'm not using any mathematical formulation. I'm attempting to do it the way a fully trained experienced period staymaker would do. Now I don't have that training. I don't have that experience, but I value that. And in my struggles to imitate not only what they did, but how they did it, it makes me appreciate just how much training they had, the apprenticeships they served and any tailor who went on to specialize in staymaking in any kind of population center where there was sufficient demand of business for specialized in that. I don't want to undervalue that skill, that highly trained skill. Using different methods than we would tend to immediately our go-to methods would be different today. It's a different world. But the more that I try to do it, the way the historical evidence indicates that they did it, the more I appreciate that. I used to draw a lot as a child, so this is not particularly terrifying, but for a lot of people it is, and I get that. Okay, just discovered that the overhead camera battery had died, so just going to review where we're at. That I used those two key points of that waistline and the arbitrary bust line, and I used that distance by putting that along the arc that I had drawn for the bust to basically map out points, dots for the arc for the waistline, and then I could sketch the men gently to join the dots. And I did that for both the front and the back. So as you can see now, the curve is a little bit, it drops off, it should drop off, just a touch more quickly on the front and it drops a bit further, lower down than it does in the back. So I can see that here, I should probably have that more like that so that it hugs that straight line just a little closer, a little longer, a little further away from the vertical midline. And then I can clean that up a bit, just to see if it looks okay. That's that, okay. I'll check my notes for the next stage. Yes, I need to very carefully determine exactly what the end point is for each of these lines. It won't be the same as it is on the straight, we shall see. So for the bust, so AD is the front of the bust and I need to track this along as it curves. And you can see it's actually gained a touch that this to this is the same as this to this. Okay, so this is actually coming out to here. Right, the waist, half of the waist is AF. Here we go. So we've got that to there. This needs to track along here and that has extended to there. Okay, same with the back. So that was AD and I've stopped and think about this. We didn't revise any of this. Okay, so AD is not revised in the back. Oh yes, it hugs the line a lot more here, a little bit longer. Do this in smaller increments. Oh, that looks a bit flat, okay. Let's show you again, again, again, again, again. So it's here, okay. And then the waist, same again for the waist. So here to here, right, right. So now we follow that around. Sometimes tricky to not move it too much or too little as you come around. Okay, I'm after this line here. Okay, so we can see here, we've actually got revision, change. And perhaps that was just a case of I shouldn't have drawn these long lines so early in the game. I should have got these arcs in place first. That's okay, because I can see now what needs to be done. Thank goodness for erasers. And don't be afraid to use it. Eraser is your friend to enable you to do better, just like a seam ripper. So what's actually happened, if you think about this, stop and think about why these lines, the positions have changed slightly. I had added circumference on there to try to make allowances for how much compression there was in the measurements that I took with her already wearing stays. These revised lines kind of reflect that a little bit that in stays, she had more of a nipped-in waist. You take the stays out of the equation, something closer to a natural body that has not yet been compressed. And that kind of hopefully returns you, returns your mapping out of the general dimensions of the body, the length and the circumference. Now you've got sort of a relatively clean slate. So that as you draw in the pattern pieces that include darts, that means you are now drawing in the reductions again, but the reductions according to this style of stays, not the style of stays she was wearing when I took her measurements, which could have looked very different, that style and how the seams were shaped with curved shaped darts to achieve that silhouette and that shape. Now we've got something here that we can map on this style and the shaping that was given to each of the seams to give the silhouette of this style of stays. But first we need to carry on with the measurements to determine the width of the back pieces, excuse me, the width across the front neckline above the bust and it's from that then we can shape out the armhole and then begin to refine the shapes of the pattern pieces. But doing this will finish mapping in the shapes, the measurements and proportions of the person's body. So that's what we'll crack on and do now is finish, start working through this. The instructions say once the length of the front and back, including the front and back peaks, ah, yes I haven't done that yet, let's get to that. Front and back peaks, this is a little bit of a negotiation between the style of the stays, so how much in the front, for example, at the waistline, how much further are you happy for that front peak to go? That's partly a matter of the style of the stays and that's partly the preferences of the individual wearing the stays and what they're comfortable with. So we see that people are wearing different styles throughout their lifetimes, some they may have found more comfortable than others, although all of them still fulfill the role of posture and support. However, almost inevitably, just as today with changing fashions, there are certain things you kind of think, ah, that suits me really, really well and that may then affect what you say to your staymaker for a new style of stays, but you kind of, you might say I'm really not prepared for the peak to go that low or to stop that high. We just don't know how much for each of the surviving extant stays, how much of that individual's preference fed into the pattern that was drafted to make those stays, whether we are seeing a highly fashionable ideal rendered into garments or whether each and every pair of surviving stays that we can study today, it seems reasonable to expect that every single one of them reflects some input from the wearer. So for determining the length here of the peak as it carries on below the waist, let me check whether we need to be doing the high hip curve just yet. So AI from this waist to here, that's going to be the top of the stays and then we need to continue on down to find the peak. Now I've got notes here that indicate that the peak drops three to four inches. So let me just check here. We have mapped up to find the center front top. Ah, I can find the center back top first. So we'll finish getting the top line and then, right, now that strikes me as too low. Well, maybe not, maybe not. So this measurement is center back to waist. Okay, my notes in this are affected somewhat by my own preferences in staymaking. I'm for myself, so I need to bear that in mind. So it may be at mock-up stage that we'll determine to adjust the height of the back just as we might adjust the height of the front line. So with those two points now, I'm going to need to establish some square, what we call squaring off. So from this line, I need to get that line across there on the compass, centered on that dot there. That is going to be a line. This won't be the top line. It will just be a guide point line. Okay, and then square off this. Quite no yet how long these lines need to be. That's fine. So considering what that arm's eye is going to look like, that looks about right for this style of stays. This is a pretty arbitrary number, kind of taken from the length of the peaks on the extant stays. I'm taking that as a feature of the pattern, although as I said it might have had input from the wearer. So we're going to make the front peak down to there. Let me just double check that that seems reasonable. No, there's more to it than that. There's more to it than that. Oh, this is a factor of measurement. Okay, tool based. What I'm after is AL. There we go. That's better. That's better. This was something that was taken with her input, considering how low she was happy to have that front peak come down. The same with the back. Got a feeling I don't have the letter marked on it. So that's AG. Don't seem to have that. Let me see if it appears proportionate here. 1.8 and a half. The same. Okay, so that's fine. So from the waist, just need this really. Waistline to here. Waistline to here. Okay, and that looks about right. Yeah, that will effectively, because of, again, greater proportion of this side, it will be a little bit lower on that side than here. Okay, so that's the peaks. From the waist, we want to drop down an inch and three quarters. And this is a matter of the pattern that is to the length of the skirts. So the length of the skirts, I've got three and a half, three and three quarters. And these are notes, again, the pattern of the, right. So this is effectively what we're working with for drafting this arc here. So this is going to be the start of what in recent years, people refer to the split of the tabs, but what this is is the endpoint of the shaping darts that are on any seams here. It's as far down as that dart is going. So that's what we're determining here is, and I'm looking at that and thinking this feels quite low, but I've got to remember it's a matter of scale. And this is a trickier arc, because it's not running parallel to anything else. It's steeper in the front than it is in the back. Right, so here I need to focus my mind in a sense, sort of step back and look at the bigger picture as to how that arc needs to appear. And as I've got various bracelets that interfere just a bit, I'm going to take that one off, because what I've got is I need to go from this line to this line mirroring that. So there's going to be a little bit more of a, it's going to be a bit of an arch there, and it's going to drop down. Again, as I did before, I'm just going to feather this in and actually look at what it looks like. Okay, I think I don't quite know where the recording overran its limits. I think the pit that might not have been filmed is me continuing to work on reconciling the arbitrary measurements of the length of the peaks as taken from the extant stays in that pattern versus the length of the peaks measured on this wearer and her input into how she wants that to feel, and then taking into account then the proportions of the arc. And I have moved it higher, bearing in mind that at this point that needs to be one and one quarter inch, whereas the notes I had from the workshop indicated that was a distance a drop of one and three quarters. One and one quarter actually seems to fit this proportion better. And then I've been able to make that curve and that curve is going to be the line where the tops of the skirts take, where the body of the stays open out into skirts that spread out over the hip. So that line does rise closer to the waist at the sides and it does drop at the front and drop at the back. It drops more at the front than at the back a little bit deeper. But that is reflected also in the comparative lengths of the peaks that the front is sometimes just a touch longer. The peak in this case is possibly a little shorter for the wearer's comfort. The back, we're going with the pattern. Don't think that she felt super strongly either way and this works for the kind of support on the back with the way that peak and the eventual skirts are going to splay over the curvature of the buttocks to spread the load to make all the petticoats and any skirt supports more comfortable. And those need to sit in a particular place just right if they're going to do that job and be comfortable. And that comes back to my theory that moving the center back or allowing it to shift in or out with a narrowing or widening of the lacing gap to account for changes in weight is not the way to go. So keep flogging that horse. That's what I believe to be the case. If anyone has a differing view, I would love to get together and talk about that. Right, so we are now where we can start to kind of map out the proportions of the four pattern pieces just determining kind of where they're going to slice up this pie, if you like. So I have squared off from the top of the center front. I need to determine that distance is AC on the tape. Right, okay. Add half an inch to center back. Where is AB? There we go. AB is centered back to the edge of the armhole. That seems quite... That's much too... Think about something mislabeled. That is not unless that's the width of the back and I want that this might be quite wide. I see. Start a little checking. And shifted the... I had kind of... I don't know, slipped something wrong slightly with determining this point and then squaring off. So I've just redrawn that. I've also got just a little bit of uncertainty in my notes about this portion. So we'll just take this one step at a time but square off from the top of the center front across AC. That's what I've done here. Add half an inch to center back, okay. Square off the distance of AB. Okay, so I had that slightly. I'd squared that off too soon. AB, draft the top line. Determine the arm's eye front point. So it says one and three quarters from this. Two inches, that's right. This vaguely brings a bell now. This will be where the peak is. So I need a curve, a gentle curve here and it kind of needs to be done again on a full curve sort of thing. So we've got a little bit of a rounded edge here. Not too sharp. This arm needs to... something like this. Actually, from this we can see this. It comes and hits this line and slightly raises up again. So we've got a little bit more depth to the armhole here and then less there. That doesn't look too bad. Right, it looks like an armhole. An arm's eye. At this stage, that's all I'm going to expect of it. Right. So now we need... a portion. That looks too wide. This is a definite measurement I've taken. That's a definite measurement I've taken. It looks like it should come over to here. Try that again. That's AB, isn't it? What's this? Actually, I think it's more... I might have drawn that in the wrong place. Hello again. Thank you for sticking through this far. Don't worry. This was a natural break in the drafting process where I reached the point where I wasn't too sure what was going on with the width of the back. So I actually put the project away overnight and came back the next morning and thankfully was able to solve that and move forward. So stay tuned for part two.