dress dummies and tailoring ideas.

[sstormwatch]

Period dress dummy... an effigy! Like the one of Queen Elizabeth I herself. I found a written description of it here.

It is described as a straw stuffed fabric body, with wooden arms, with a wax head. The wax head is now missing from the effigy that remains, as you can see here.

Comments

[myladyswardrobe]

Tailor's Shears:>
Stuart Peachey has period repro shears - you can see them on this page. I don't know if he still has them because he hasn't been able to get hold of the tiny cauldron recently. Its worth a shot to ask him though.

Yard Stick:
This is far easier - 36" flat rule of wood that you can get from any home depot type of place. Sand it down etc neatly (if needed) and then take your tape measure and mark off the 1 inch intervals. You could, if you wanted to, heat up a metal whatever and heat score the marks into place.

In terms of other measurements, you have lots of strips of brown paper - when you need to measure a customer, you use those strips to measure whatever body part and mark the start and end length and mark what it was. One strip could have multiple marks on it for one customer. Does that make sense? You would then hang those strips on a hook along with the paper patterns you would make for the client.

Other items:
Use the shaker type boxes to keep things in. Examples of these are abundant in portraitureKarens

[sstormwatch]

Thank you so very much for this info and links. And yes, if you would bring the articles, if you have space that is. Or if you tell me which journals they were in, I can hunt them down.

[laswa]

Every portrait I have seen of a tailor at work they are sitting "tailor-fashion" (cross-legged) up on the table. Why on the table?

[sstormwatch]

From what I've seen... it's because the open window has the best light, and maybe that's why they keep their table near the window. Why they don't sit there in chairs, and not on the table itself, I don't know.

Here's one image that has a tailor sitting in a chair, and not near a window for some reason.
http://www.nuernberger-hausbuecher.de/75-Amb-2-317b-85-v/data
I kind of wonder about the perspective drawing tho'... if the tailor stood up, he'd hit his head on the ceiling really quick!