 Hi, I'm Rebecca Old. Welcome back to my studio here at Times Smith Dress History. This video is part two in a three-part series where I am showing you the hows and why's, the actual process and decision-making and skills in drafting a pattern for a pair of stays typical for the 1760s. They are fully boned and strapless and this style was documented and patterned in Patterns of Fashion 5, published a few years ago by the School of Historical Dress. I learned the ARC method for drafting stays patterns from Luca Costugliolo through a workshop at the School of Historical Dress in 2019. I've had a lot more practice in this method and I really hope that these videos will show you my process and explain how I do this and why and that will help you in your own projects. So let's get right back into the stays drafting. We left part one on a little bit of a cliffhanger so let's see how this progresses now. So at this point we've got basically the basic framework of the body starting with the midline under the arm, front, center front, center back. We've got established kind of the width of the chest up to sort of the arms eye with where the point is going to be and then sketched in likewise a preliminary kind of grid line for the top of the back which I've just taken a few moments to double check that it's not too wide and does in fact reflect both Sarah's measurements and go some way to addressing the too wide gap that she has in her current stays but this should sit very comfortably on her upper back. So with those sort of frameworks we also have the first three arcs starting with the bust arc, a waist arc and what Luca and the Patterns of Fashion 5 team refer to as high hip. This is actually the line that you could trace connecting the tops of the skirts as they flare out over the hip and dip lower towards the front peak and to the back peak but a bit lower in the front for this style of stays. So the next thing we need to do actually is just the fourth curve and this one is very specific to the style of the stays. There's no reference to body measurements as you can see it is sketched out here and it just marks how long the stays are going to be sorry the skirts are going to be as they come off the body of the stays from that high hip line. These will flare a little bit the ones that are showing overlapping in a flat pattern in a three-dimensional shape as a structure. Those flare out a bit and they don't quite touch but these are a bit longer and need to basically determine the curve around to the back. So that's what I will attempt now and it is pretty much a free form drawing. I've just checked some kind of measurements to kind of against this in terms of the general proportions. I've checked how long these are going to sit relative to the waist and the tops of the skirts and I think the sort of shortest point there is going to be something like this curving to it could actually be a little higher. I think the one compromise we have here is Sarah's desire to not have a super long peak. This style is significantly longer than the fourth quarter of the century style of stays she has been wearing so this will feel a bit different to her and if I was sticking strictly to the pattern proportions this peak would in fact be longer and this line of the skirts would then come in and kind of intersect. You can see they're not as long as that peak. So we've got a little bit of a compromise here but again as I've said that is really body specific and wearer preference. The lady who wore the stays that survived from which this pattern was taken may have been long torsoed and and perhaps really was happy with a very long peak. We just don't know but to suit Sarah as always when you are doing a commission for someone else the customer's needs that come first even if that means it's adjusting to the reference points that you are using to inform your drafting. So what I'm seeing there is this curve looks much steeper. This is not too different from the actual waistline arc but it does come up a little bit more so that's what I have just kind of determined here. However with that relatively short peak that's may not create the end result that ideally I would want. So I think what here I need to do is employ some of my initiative in deciding the length of these skirts and I think that is a little bit of a matter of proportion. The overall proportions I'm looking at this and trying to again as I've mentioned sort of picture Sarah in my mind's eye and try to visualize this as a three-dimensional more of a sculptured garment around her and looking at how that's going to fall then and where those skirts are going to be and as I do that in this case I think these skirts might and again I'm always referencing the pattern as well and I wonder if the skirts might not be a bit better if they are a bit shorter and in fact I'm rethinking that high hip looking at that I wonder if it shouldn't be a bit more like that possibly. That's a pretty hard dark line but if that falls away a bit steeply that is a little bit gentle but I think that does need to be flat again and just go straight off in that direction. Okay that just helps me visualize these skirts these need to this is going to be where they really basically release the tension any compression that's happening higher on the body these skirts are going to kind of flop out there so I'm going to do that I think that feels a little more realistic also makes me just look at the waist and bust that looks about right that's yeah okay and that's it looks a little flat but I think adding a bit of curve in yeah possibly not curve just just I just want to make sure that that the gradient or yeah the degree of curve is gradual in its change and without any flat spots in it so I think that seems about right right that feels better but now it looks a little more curved than that I'm gonna amend this slightly just sort of a median in between where I had it first then what I just changed it to I'm gonna go back and sketch something in that's kind of in the middle of that happy medium maybe third time's a charm yeah that seems a little better I'll just reinforce that I think that a little touch confusing my marks that's in there okay so now for the length the actual length of the skirts that one's gonna come down and it's gonna pop out flare a little bit that's gonna be a little bit on the shorter I think I think for my line given that these ones right in the middle don't come down to the line I think that's probably about right and it's gonna it's gonna come across it's that short peak don't want to compromise the style too much because that line is about where I want these skirts to come out to and I want the peak a little bit longer I think I am going to and perhaps this is sort of a bit prescriptive that's a little too round if that makes sense needs to be just a little bit more more like a mountain okay that's a bit prescriptive as in I'm I'm making decisions so we might call that drafters bias as in I'm drafting to a certain degree this is I think this is true every single pattern drafter you you you you draft to your strengths you draft to your influence by what you like what you think looks good what you would kind of recommend and I think that actually matches the proportions of the original pattern really well and that back peak comes into exactly where it should um in fact that's sort of the point up here I'm looking at that and wondering if it could just be touch more these are not completely derived or dependent on the wearer's body these are sort of refinements according to the style of the stays so I'm checking that pattern all the time so what I want to do is I'll have I'll have just a little bit of flair added here just a touch neglected to do this so that is fine there that's going to come across up here and for the sake of the pattern I'm going to go ahead and add in about half an inch just a touch we'll know in the mock-up whether this is a viable a viable thing all right just taking a moment to label all of these arcs and lines don't know whether they're called creative license or academic license but basically we are looking at four arcs that do the job reflect the pattern in the overall proportions and lengths of the skirts as they go on but also with reference to Sarah's overall size shape proportion and measurements taken from her body so let's see how this goes now that we begin to sketch in things that are specific to the pattern specific to the style so that will be things like the number of pattern pieces or panels as you can see here in patterns of fashion five the basic shapes of four of them and those gradually get refined and completed with the shaping the darts that are specific to this pattern that are not done by reference to any particular wearer they do need to create the shape of this style and that is where that is done I will take a moment here and decide from this description and from my notes exactly the order the things I need to do I need to be sure that I am apportioning the the the overall hole which is half the body that I'm giving the correct proportion to panels one two three and four before I then begin to complete and and work in the the overall the the curves of the shapes and drawing the skirts and such like so that's where we're at now we have got everything that's on the second drawing plus we've got the top line the arms eye and a bit of a suggestion on what's going to be happening up at the upper back so we can get started here so I think the next thing that I will do is that apportioning and what we've got here is the front panel comes through and the top of that first seam sometimes useful to label the seams to have a name to refer to that seam this first one in my workshop notes is labeled A so the top of that seam sits a little bit back from the that midline I may not have that as far back as what might actually be useful so I'm going to go something a bit like that when it comes down it needs to come all the way down to the high hip arc line that is where that front piece and then the next panel piece this is this is where they're going to be stitched down to and then it will be free the peak will be on this side and the first skirt of that second panel pattern piece will be here so this is really looking at the the direction the end point for drawing this seam this is all a matter of proportion so if I want to sort of break this up and look at the center front line and that midline you can see that that is approximately a third of the way along we'll go with that to get started so if I take something like this and let's see I am intersecting yes it's this line so I'm going to just walk this along a little bit to take a measure take its measure that line and I'll just crease that there and then I'm going to fold that in thirds and see what I have there there not quite okay so we've got a portioned thirds on this and because I've got some other creases sort of inadvertent ones I'm just going to make a mark there so I don't lose that so from that end walking it around to this crease this is this is the end point we're going for here and I think while I'm here I'm going to go ahead and do these apportionments of the other of the skirts just make little little dots so that I can see that from this line to here I'm going to need to divide that up into thirds as well so we'll do that quite quickly run those like that so from this point up here we're going to go with the one that's slightly further back I need a straight edge this is a reference point this is not the end seam line this is a framing tool a bit like using a grid right so it's going to run like this to through that point there so that's this line here I think it's actually probably a bit simpler to now take this next one from the back the top here this will be seen the seam that's labeled C so starting it's it's halfway along of that half back measure so it's there and it's almost exactly parallel to the center back it's not exactly it flares slightly and you can see that when you look at the garment that you can see the center back and then the point on the other side of that panel where it seems on to the adjacent panel that that's a touch a very slight touch wider than at the very top there is a certain optical illusion here when you're looking at this because it's of the boning pattern because the bones that are in there that go all the way from top to bottom create an empty space that is that widens out but don't forget that this this seam is not dead straight and there are some partial length bones in there as well so it's a little bit of an illusion but that is a little bit wider and as we'll see as I've already sketched in but I'll deal with that in full in a moment the the back peak right where below the points where the lacing stops it does flare outward it is not a straight straight line and neither is this once we get the dart wrapped in so on that basis we're looking at let's see this is half CB AB I mean right there is half AB I'm going to measure down a little bit let's see to this point I'm going to move that over a little teeny bit here I want that a teeny bit yet a bit more here and here we'll go so let's see what we get here this is not a precise line it just needs at this point to be a straight line and it is a little bit closer to the center back than it is to the midline so it's maybe about 40 percent something like that a 60 40 split yeah that's just a rough approximation the actual B seems that's a little bit deceptive because what we're actually dealing with here is a rounded a rounded edge to this piece and then the B actually takes off down here that's really a matter of proportion as well I'm not going to take an exact measurement um but that measure uh that's this line here which I've not got on here is has got a description it is a center back to back of the arms I think I I misinterpreted something in my notes I think actually AC needs to be sitting down lower as a measurement of the body AC oh AB why am I saying AC AB actually needs to be more like this let's make sure that's absolutely square I could probably usefully invest in a square I haven't done that so that tells me that I have actually got too tight of an arms eye here right I'm gonna go to the other side of the table so I can use my draw curve using this motion of my arm rather than trying to do this so what I've got here is a bit more of a shallow something like that yeah that looks appropriate okay so that means my apportioning here is a bit off which is fine easily we've done we haven't we haven't mapped anything out that's dependent on that line yet so that's a good time to do that sense check and be absolutely sure right so this is going to be rounded off a little bit and we will retake this let's see is actually something more like this so we're going to reduce C and that is still going to be okay that is slightly more noticeably flared which is fine I was a little concerned that it still looked a little too parallel to the eye I think that will make more sense okay so that's now you've got A and C B is basically that line for B it's got the little dog leg right there at the top we'll deal with that in a second but the essential line of the piece needs to be go from there down to intersecting here at the high hip okay that's a fairly flared piece and that's okay because that's the so-called Eiffel Tower piece now that seems more flared than I expected because normally this the angles of these pieces would be have a little bit more relationship which makes me wonder if perhaps I think that will work I have to think about the the ramifications of choosing that line I'm going for that end point from that start point straight line and I'm looking at that to that there's going to be some curvature built in and the curvature actually does mean taking quite a lot of the dart being very gathered through there which makes sense because that is kind of the the curvature of the back where if someone is what we call sway backed that is what pulls the garment in close to the body right there's a bit more flare than I expected which leads me back to that line yeah I think this is too gradual shooting off that way I think it needs to kind of cup a little bit more like here so that you've got I'm going to split the difference I'm going to add half an inch there that will mean moving seat again that's fine I think that's what we need to do but we're going to go and just redraw that curve a little bit so that point is fixed that's a measurement so in moving the end point up to here this alters the kind of the pitch of that curve there so what I want is something that goes through that line and is going to then curve a little bit deeper just a bit more of a scoop deeper scoop and then around like that let's see how that looks I think what we'll do is sort of take that by halves so I had the line one way I reshaped it and it created a little bit of a bulge so now I am taking that kind of a splitting the difference to more of a what I hope is a happy medium that will reflect the lines of the pattern but go through the go through the points that are determined by the measurements taken look at that upside down but arm size are not an even circle or half circle anyway and that's what a mock-up is for is to see whether on the body when you start dealing with little fleshy bits that can't predict exactly how they're going to behave that's when you find out whether things kind of poke or meet a little resistance or squeeze or gape those things that sheer measurements alone don't tell you that's why you always make a mock-up okay so this will be line c drawn for the third time and it sometimes feels like three is the magic number you do it one way and do it slightly differently and then you end up splitting the difference not unusual I'm going to just resketch that line in now this in terms of the mock-up and how Sarah actually finds this hitting on our body this can be raised or lowered um if anything for the styles I think this pretty much matches for her proportions this style of stays but we will see um the key thing is that measurement between the center back and the actual you know where that's going to hit her um behind the arm we don't want it um impeding her her movement and I'm actually looking at that and see that the curve has has actually added a little bit to the garment edge which we don't quite want and that might fixing that might deal with the slight bulge that I'm seeing so we need to actually go through that line I think that looks okay it looks like an arm's eye right and yeah I'm splitting this line in half not this not this one so that one and that's her new C I think for the sake of C I'm going to go ahead and draw this one first and see where that falls through once again battery uh the auto link kind of stop on recording files um had the time it expired and um camera switched off um so what I've been doing is studying out the proportions here of the Eiffel Eiffel Tower piece and doing a little bit of experimenting with the placement of the lines for the seams those two seams that's got the little dog leg in it which means that when these are constructed this portion here will have no boning in it whatsoever that does create an ability to kind of tuck in a dart to shape the back to pull the back the upper part of the back of the stays a little closer to the body to create curvature around the body there but I've now got that line to to divide we've now got three lines to divide the whole pattern into four pieces proportionately I've done a bit more or double checking or third checking in some cases um my initial impression here is that creating a skirt um this seems a little bit uh kind of short and squat like it's a kind of floppy so it's possible that this either needs to come down a little bit or perhaps the high hip line raised a little bit but those are things we'll see in the mock up um when they're actually on Sarah's body um because again the the arcs are drawn according to the staymaker the draft the the pattern drafter their um understanding um but these are freehand their free form there's not a mathematical formula that can place uh that arc and draw it exactly based on any kind of measurements or known mathematical figures um this is um a draftsman's art um and I am I think these are these are pretty it's going to vary by staymaker staymaker in terms of how accurate if you like but I think at the end of the day the proof is in the pudding as they say it isn't until a mock-ups made that you can determine whether those arcs um work or not because it's not just measurements it's kind of the kind of uh structure of the body and the um squishiness I guess um uh everyone is different so that's where we're at with that now now the next the next thing I'm going to do before I've got I've got the skirts kind of roughly a portion for the second piece uh panel piece um a pattern piece I should say and that's got quite a distinctive shape because it's it's on a slant it's kind of at an angle and um looking at the pattern piece as it's actually taken for this pair of stays it's this piece so it is it has got quite a cant now it's it's situated on the page this way to show the grain line and kind of the boning directions but when you slide that in next to the um the front piece you can see it's really quite a strong angle then it sits much higher much further along up the arms eye the back of the arm uh than this point does and similarly the shape of the bottom here it really needs to flare the the lines of the the the high hip line that show that where the tops of the skirts are really take quite an angle there um so that that whole kind of canting if you like uh uh and this when you put place it like this it looks like it's off grain but remember when cutting when cutting the pattern pieces and the fabric this drawing gives you um uh the the the grain and lets you see that the boning channels are not exactly on grain as this one is definitely on grain that's definitely on grain and this most of the bones are on grain um this one is slightly a unique piece uh these two pieces um can vary a lot and can get kind of funky um and mock-ups really determine sort of really really show you how how uh unusual these two pieces may need to be um but when you think about the the shape of the body and that area of the body you know it's very uh three-dimensional it's um and very unique everyone is very individual I'm repeating myself here it's difficult to say but that is that that really needs to be tailored just so uh in ordinary English since the word not tailoring as a trade just so much but really needs to be that really needs to be bespoke um that you can't just look at those pieces and say right those pieces need to be fixed I'd say there's more that needs to be sort of fixed arbitrary on the front piece and to perhaps a lesser degree on the back piece but these two get very very individual once you've got these uh the apportionment um division of the the pattern into four pieces uh according to the proportions and measurements then I need to build in the shaping of this style of stays what I need for doing this is not shown anywhere on this page you can't see the shaping of the darts and anything about these pieces or even when they're connected here where you can see where they join at the top where they join the bottom you can see there's quite a curvy dart in here but the only clue in patterns of fashion five to give you a clue what these are all lies in this drawing with the straight line through the middle and what that gives you is a frame of reference as to the shape of the edge of the pattern piece on each side of that line so this is not a seam line the shaping the curved things will be will be what needs to be joined to each other so in this case that curved line to that curved line will be stitched together a curve to curve and the curves are not symmetrical in this case the leading edge that front edge of pattern piece two here remains straight and curve is drawn into this edge of the first piece and that is a fairly conservative curve but depending on the body and whether there's a sort of a hollowing out underneath the bust along the rib cage that can be much more dramatic than that but we do know that that straight edge there is going to be the edge of this second piece so i can firm that up and make it a much darker line that is a pattern piece line okay so what's happening here is the relative shaping of this what we did in the workshop was to find the widest point the biggest distance between the curved line and the straight line whether it's this straight line or this straight line or this straight determine where that is and then that gives you some kind of points to start plotting your curve in now this drawing in patterns of fashion five does not include that but the workshop did now that's from the workshop so i am not going to be showing that on screen okay more freehand drawing but i find personally that some of this you can kind of use a ruler not to draw the line the ruler will move under my hand but to steady my pencil to somewhat control the degree of the curve okay so this is what a straight line would look like between roughly these points but i don't want a straight line i want a little bit of shape to this so right i am drawing from down here it's got to be from here running through that running to there and it's actually just about here okay as i'm here just sketch that in okay now what i know is approximately the placements of where is the the widest point of these darts relative to the straight line so this one the the kind of if there's a bulge if you like furthest away from that straight line needs to be down this way and whereas the corresponding one on the other piece is more this way so i'm now just basically looking eyeballing that to see if that portion between my fingers looks of a similar shape and it is you can see this doesn't really start to diverge from from that center straight line until about there i'm kind of messing it up now so it's pretty even and the line at this for the curvature at this point is so so slight that you can just actually use a straight edge to kind of feather very lightly so that's i've drawn that very lightly this one looks pretty good it kind of sometimes sometimes you can find that the actual bulge is not quite in the right place so i want to make sure that it's clear that this is the outside and that this is coming towards it this way both ways that's not bad i have struggled with that one in the past and got really really fussy and i've had luka redraw this for me on the very first time i did this in a workshop i don't think that's too bad i'm just gonna go back and double check this one that it's not too extreme kind of looks like it might be a little bulgy when maybe it should be just a touch more streamlined yeah possibly so the last one this one this one i actually quite enjoyed because it's pretty very just a sliver taken out of this side of the seam and it's fairly not quite symmetrical right this is my end point here don't get confused and and be ending your dart on this higher line that's a waistline you need it to come to the high hip this is this these darts come in right at the top of the skirts because that is the point where the pieces are joined they are joined by stitching and then they're separate so it's got to be the high hip line okay on this one the darts do start from the very top that sort of apex needs to be a little higher up on the body reposition that you can see i'm not using the ruler to draw a straight line i'm purely using it really to rest to kind of stabilize my pencil as it moves across here so kind of using it to direct my curve a little bit because i've got several faint lines here i've decided it might be better if i just do this for you hand according to where i think i want that line that probably needs a bit of evening up which i can use the ruler to just smooth that portion slightly okay this basically means a little feathering with with now a little judicious cleanup on the underside right let's not lose my grid marks grid lines or my arcs so now i'm looking at this and i'm looking at that Eiffel Tower piece and i'm seeing really seeing the differences in the shapes on each side um this i've got a little bit of a funny slight bulge to the line i think i can possibly smooth up that's okay because this does start here and this here but that is the Eiffel Tower piece that's going to have three skirts on it right i have a quick look now getting a little more precise a little bit more honed in zeroed in on the shape of this dart and at this point that looks like a pretty large dart it should be similar in size to this one smaller than this one so i think perhaps i've got just a bit carried away here and this one could be more like this which then affects the shape of the peak as it continues down this way does that peak now look like a more even flow to here that peak is not going to be vastly long we can see now what i've done here it's basically this creates continues on this is the curve and it's possible this could curve even more but i want to remember that that is that is at that point right so for skirts what i've got is the tip of that one it's got quite a shape it really is a sort of a continuation of this line with a slight curve just with much more curvature on this this side so i'm going to again sort of use my ruler as a means to support my pencil this one i always think of as a finger it really is like an index finger kind of pointing the way it's comparatively narrow because that kind of pointy effect and when i say pointy i don't mean straight i mean i mean like a finger it's right the next one rests right on this so that is actually the tip of it and you can see the angles jut out a little bit differently but this one is almost the same width top to bottom so that actually i can sort of map out if i go here ah i forgot that it's a little bit at an angle so if i go here here and that third one is a little bit shorter so it's going to come in more like this i'm also looking at the gaps in between so the these guys okay this is not a continuation of that line the way i drew it it's okay and it's a little bit wider at the tip than it is here i'm just gonna use that usefully these in many ways are easier walked around to here we've got then from there walked around here we've got that and that is okay on this on the eiffel tower piece that middle skirt finger is pretty much on a straight parallel plane with the piece itself so i can kind of center it that as a ruler seeing how that's coming down now when i actually look at the thirds it doesn't quite measure up but that's okay that comes down to body so we can do that and that yeah it's pretty close so the fingers themselves are very rectangular very rectangular here i'm kind of even width across the top it tapers very very slightly so i'm just going to can't my ruler very slightly pencil in these lines they're going to be a very slight taper and those come very nearly to this arc line okay again as a matter of proportion these skirts feel short but my suspicion is here that some of this is due to a longer torso on the wearer of the stays from which this pattern was taken so this will come down to you sarah which makes her mock up what she thinks it's very easy to change the shape of skirts at mock up um stage right now these three skirts do splay quite a lot so this one here that front edge from that dart is almost a continuation of this curve which looks a little too pronounced i think it needs to come in a bit like this and then it can kind of flare out and you can see that that overlaps on this single drawing overlaps nearly into the the middle of the adjacent skirt which is wider so i'm going to now kind of vaguely square this off it's a fairly short skirt really but it needs to come back to here and it needs to be something like that this and it's not absolutely square at the tip so it's something like this that looks quite a lot longer so i think we've come too far down yeah something more like that has always ended up with some of them always having the appearance of being wider and it's because the measurements taken on this curve which is not squared up across the tab so it's a little bit of an optical illusion right on this side we also have the same situation where this dart line curves into but then it has it straightens up a little bit so we will go ahead and make that in a little darker i think it's probably about right but then we're going to straighten up slightly so we're not following that line exactly we are curving back in not an insignificant amount something like that the skirt itself is kind of follows on a continuum here about an equal amount of splay and i think that needs to be just a touch more this way yeah so that's going to kind of round off it's slightly rounded not a square to some okay that's like that now this for the peak portion that was the original kind of grid line but we need to sort of continue this piece down here it's a little bit longer yeah and we're going to round it off okay leave we have all the features we have a top line we have all the seam lines we have all the arcs we have all the skirts we've got the darts haven't forgotten anything left them off need to get rid of some extra lines that might confuse me okay i'm going to pause here take some photographs and a short video reviewing this and then talk about how to transfer this master drawing onto individual pattern pieces like you would expect to see in a pattern with the grain line indicated and in this case we'll also be giving an indication of suggested boning channels directions and placement which also means sort of calculating the ideal width of boning to fully fill those channels so that they go in very very snugly so that the result is that the entire garment is fully boned with no empty unboned just kind of soft quilty bits they do need to be completely boned so we'll move on to that in just a moment so the pattern is now done and here is the master pattern showing all of the parts all in one drawing and in part three of this video series i'll show you how i use this to create a usable pattern with all of the pieces separate and ready to lay out and cut out the fabrics for building the stays so that's in part three we'll see you over there shortly