(No) Commercial Patterns

Apparently the 18th-century "rococo" period is not really all that popular among amatuer/hobby-costumers. I say this because there are very few commercial patterns for the time period, and those that do exist are either full-on courtly formal sack dresses (pictured at right) or American Revolution styles that aren't at all what the French fashionistas were wearing. Or fashionistos, for that matter--I have yet to find a single men's costume that even remotely approaches what I need for his. This dearth of variety in women's costume is in English only...there is one German site that offers a wider variety of styles including the one I am making. But since I don't speak German, for my robe a la polonaise I instead have 3 different costume patterns that may or may not in the end contribute to my dress (one for the petticoat, one for the split skirt, one for the bodice and sleeves).


Essentially, then, I am designing my own. Okay, far, far, FAR from really, because I have 2 different books for each of us and a fabulous website that goes into a lot of detail about how to make the clothing of the time. It will be more useful for his, because the women's robe on that website is the sack dress most typical of the time, which is not what I'm making. But the site is where I'm getting my chemise and stays patterns, and taking her construction advice if not the pattern shapes for my dress. Her patterns are developed from old tailoring guides and museum pieces--which is pretty much the same (in the sense of equivalent, not the actual same) source material as the books I have are pulling from.


I'm both excited and terrified at the prospect of creating my own designs. Terrified because, going back to the whole, I'm a beginner and likely to have enough trouble putting real patterns together thing: what the fuck am I thinking?! Excited because, my dress will be completely and entirely customized to my figure, which is not at all in the standard way (broad shoulders, high waist, large-boned and heavy-muscled, long-limbed without the attendent lankiness), and because when I've daydreamed about making costumes it's designing my own fanciful shit and then realizing it, not just placidly recreating someone else's daydream.


I've taken as many screen-shots off Stanze's dress as I can to see how they seamed it, and I'm planning to draw out a to-scale view of my own body and use my math skillz to measure out each seam relative to my size. I never thought I'd be combining both my Art I class with arithmetic, but trust me to find a way, lol. At least I have experience blowing things up from a small scale to a large on a grid, thanks to a couple different Art I projects, and I have enough skill with a pencil to draw the lines right. I'll have to do it blowing up the patterns from the book(s)/website for his, anyway, so it's not actually that far a stretch to staring at how the costumer for the movie put Stanze's bodice together and then copying it onto paper.


...Right?