A designer at work…..
July 11, 2008
A great discovery here at a local market – the sketchings of an amateur dressmaker dating from about the 1950’s. These little bodice and sleeve patterns show how the dressmaker would have changed the positions of darts and seams to create different styles. They’re all in “fifth scale” – that is one fifth of actual size, a great way to test out design ideas without having to draft full size pieces. I believe that the designer was probably copying ideas she’d seen in a dressmaker’s instruction manuals and practicing her technique.
Adorable! I still have my little mini fifthscale blocks from fashion school in a pencilcase somewhere…
have you come across any dressmaker’s models for use of test clothes from the fifth scale patterns? or is that not the done thing. my mum used to make my barbies clothes but how fiddly! and obviously not to scale to the real human woman!