Paper Sewing Patterns, Part 1

Commercially available sewing patterns have been a cornerstone of home stitching for a century. But well before they existed, there were people trying to share sewing patterns. 

Research:

• Alcega, Joan de. “Libro de geometria, practica y traça.” Madrid.1580. Accessed online:https://www.loc.gov/resource/gdcwdl.wdl_07333/
• Aldarondo, Abner. “A Master Tailor’s Manual.” Folger Shakespeare Library. Jan. 10, 2023. https://www.folger.edu/blogs/collation/a-master-tailors-manual/
• Bertrand, J.E. “Descriptions des arts et métiers faites ou approuvées.”  l'Imprimerie de la Société Typographique. 1780. Accessed online: https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=SAWFeeXzMgYC&rdid=book-SAWFeeXzMgYC&rdot=1
• Boullay, Benoit. “Le Tailleur Sincère, Contenant Ce Qu'il Faut Observer Pour Bien Tracer, Couper.” (Reproduction.) Hachette Livre Bnf. 2012.
• Buckley, Cheryl. “On the Margins: Theorizing the History and Significance of Making and Designing Clothes at Home.” Journal of Design History, vol. 11, no. 2, 1998, pp. 157–71. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/1316192
• Crane, Ellen Bicknell. “Historic Homes and Institutions and Genealogical and Personal memoirs of Worcester County, Massachusetts.” Lewis Publishing Company. 1907. Accessed online: https://books.google.com/books?id=nfhSZxL8bTEC&source=gbs_navlinks_s
• Crossland, Samantha R. “Made in Minneapolis, sewn all over the world.” Hennepin History. 2021, Vol. 80, No. 2. https://hennepinhistory.org/from-the-magazine-made-in-minneapolis/
• Demorest, Ellen. “The Question of Labor. Women’s Work and Wages.” New York Times. Nov. 18, 1863. https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1863/11/18/78710875.pdf?pdf_redirect=true&ip=0
• “The Educational Legacy of Simplicity Pattern Company.” Simplicity Patterns. September 2024. https://simplicity.com/blog/the-educational-legacy-of-simplicity-pattern-company
• Emery, Joy Spanabel. “A History of the Paper Pattern Industry: The Home Dressmaking Fashion Revolution.” Bloomsbury Visual Arts. 2020.
• Freyle, Diego de. “Geometria Y Traça Para El Oficio De Los Sastres.” Sevilla, Spain. 1588. Accessed online: https://archive.org/details/1588-geometria-y-traca-para-el-oficio-de-los-sastres/page/n1/mode/2up
• Johnson, Susan. “’Madame’ Demorest—The Woman at the Top of a 19-Century Fashion Empire.” Museum of the City of New York. April 15, 2020. https://www.mcny.org/story/madame-demorest-woman-top-19-century-fashion-empire
• The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica. "Ebenezer Butterick". Encyclopedia Britannica, 25 May. 2025, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Ebenezer-Butterick
• Britannica, The Editors of Encyclopaedia. "Ellen Louise Curtis Demorest." Encyclopedia Britannica, 11 Nov. 2024, https://www.britannica.com/money/Ellen-Louise-Curtis-Demorest
• “Demorest’s Illustrated Monthly and Mme. Demorest’s Mirror of Fashions.” April 1865. https://ia802801.us.archive.org/8/items/demorestsillustr00newy/demorestsillustr00newy_bw.pdf
• “Design Group Americas Voluntarily Files for Chapter 11 Protection, Initiates Sale Process Aimed at Maximizing Value Through Going Concern Transactions.” BusinessWire. July 3, 2025. https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20250703734892/en/Design-Group-Americas-Voluntarily-Files-for-Chapter-11-Protection-Initiates-Sale-Process-Aimed-at-Maximizing-Value-Through-Going-Concern-Transactions
• “Joseph M. Shapiro of Simplicity, 79.” New York Times. July 31, 1968. https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1968/07/31/76959179.pdf?pdf_redirect

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of iHeartRadio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Holly
Frye and I'm Tracy V. Wilson. Oh, this one's for
my stitching folks. If you're not into stitching, you might
still find this interesting. I hope you do. The first

(00:24):
week of June this year, there was a report that
circulated that the company IG Design Group had sold its
Design Group America division that's usually abbreviated as DGA in
any headlines or legal filings that you might see. That
they were selling DGA off of the international business. And
DGA is the company that is the umbrella company for

(00:48):
the sewing pattern companies that are known among stitchers as
the Big four or the Core four. So that's Simplicity Patterns, McCall's, Butterick,
and Vogue. DGA does also contain other proper lines and brands.
But this was grave news because DJA was sold to
a liquidation firm called Hilco Capital for a dollar plus

(01:11):
per the agreement seventy five percent of proceeds that Hilco
collects from the sales of the assets. Hilco is the
same company that purchased Joanne Fabrics and then liquidated it
earlier this year, as reported by the Craft Industry Alliance
quote IG Design Group cited the impact of tariffs imposed

(01:31):
by the US as a factor. Over fifty percent of
dga's products are manufactured in China, although the sewing patterns
are made in the US. The company also mentioned a
softening market over the last several years, as well as
the bankruptcy of Joanne as factors in the sale. You
can get into a whole discussion about that of like,
it's so sad that Joeanne going bankrupt and liquidating is

(01:55):
killing our sales. Let's hand everything over to the same company. Listen,
that's a whole discussion that's you're having. But there have
been some social media posts by DJA brands that are
indicating like, no, no, it's still business as usual. We're
still working on the next batch of patterns. But it
really definitely does seem like a little bit of death
knell too many people that are in the sewing and

(02:16):
crafting hobby and professional space. And when I started this outline,
there actually had not been an update on what was
going to happen next, and when hey, there has been
since we'll talk about it at the end, but most
of the folks who sow are expecting the pattern companies
to vanish, And this of course got me thinking about
how we got here in the first place. Right when
I was growing up and into my early adulthood, those

(02:38):
Big four sewing companies pattern companies were competitors for the
most part, but they eventually all somehow ended up in
one big company, which is just weird. But well before
they existed, there were already people trying to share sewing patterns.
So I thought we could talk about how this all evolved.
And because it is near and dear to my heart

(02:59):
and I can't st typing when it's about things like this,
it turned into a two parter. So Part one is
going to cover ways that books and periodicals that shared
sewing patterns or templates to create them started out and
then became very popular in Europe and the US over
the course of a couple hundred years, and then part
two will dig into the origins of the Big four

(03:20):
and where we got here. So my mention of Europe
and the US is the clue that this is going
to be pretty Western eccentric. The approaches to how you
do showing in other areas of the world are actually
in some ways very different or have been historically, But
the US and European sewing markets are really what we're

(03:42):
talking about. And then at the end of part two
we will have some information about news that broke near
the end of my research process. There will probably be
more between when we record this and when it comes
out we'll see. So people have of course been putting
together garments since before recorded history, and then over time
those garments have generally become a lot more complex. They

(04:05):
started requiring more knowledge of geometry and how to basically
assemble something inside out and then when it's turned right
side out it fits on the body. Not every garment
works that way, obviously, but a lot of garments in
the clothing traditions that Holly and I grew up in
do yeah, listen, great kill people, I hear you out there.

(04:29):
Don't worry about it. It's not about that. Yeah, yeah,
it's not what we're talking about right now. But anyway,
these like this geometric focus and this inside outing and
right side outing of the garments eventually led to the
drafting of patterns and the first known publication of such
Patterns was in fifteen eighty. This was in book form

(04:51):
and it was written by a Spanish man named Wanda
as Sega, and that book was titled Libro de Geometria
Practica israsa. This this is translated in different ways, but
the most direct translation seems to be Book on Geometry
Practice and pattern RASA, for example, is tracing. It's basically
like making out patterns. Later editions of this book, because

(05:13):
it did go through multiples, feature an illustration of Wanda
of Sega on the title page and he's using what
looks like a compass, and he has a ruler in
scissors nearby on his work table. And you would need
those tools to use this book because there were illustrations
in it that needed to be hand drafted into human
size pieces. Today, that's not the most common way to

(05:37):
acquire a pattern, but it's also not unusual. There are
still books on sewing that work this way. Sometimes they
have a grid in them and you size them up
using that grid as a reference for line placement. I
remember my mom having a couple of special rulers and
tools for doing this kind of thing. That's common today

(06:00):
is the method used in Alsega's book and that's where
the measures are listed on the diagrams and the home
pattern drafter just tries to enlarge the pattern based only
on those numbers. But not all of Alcega's illustrations have measurements.
In some of them, you get a shape and then
you just you have to sort of work it out
into a full sized item based on vibes. One to Alcega,

(06:25):
who was born in the Bosque region of Spain, became
a tailor by trade, and when he completed his book,
two other important tailors endorsed it as a valuable work.
Those are Juan Lopez de Borgette, who was the tailor
of the Duke of Alba, and ernand Gutierrez, the Princess
of Portugal's personal tailor, and it was through their support

(06:45):
that al Sga received a license from the King of
Spain to print book on Geometry Practice and Pattern for
public sale. The book's first section does not feature patterns.
It's all about the techniques that are needed for enlarging them,
and it also includes information about al Sega's effort to
write the book. It sounds really arduous. He mentions just

(07:08):
wanting to quit several times, but this book really set
the standard for sewing books that include patterns. According to
a summary by the Library of Congress quote, the quality
of the designs is noteworthy and contrasts with the neglect
scene in the writing of the accompanying explanatory texts. That's

(07:28):
something that's persisted over the centuries. A lot of times
stitchers have found the explanatory text in these kinds of
books a lot more confusing than helpful. Al Sega gives
information on the amounts of fabric that you'll need for
various patterns, just as you would find on the back
of a pattern envelope today, although the measure was different.

(07:49):
There's nothing about yards or meters in this book. At
the time, Alsega and a lot of other tailors were
using a measurement called an L. The exact length of
an L has varied in different places in different cultures,
so you can find l's that correspond to anywhere from
twenty seven to forty five inches. The L was its

(08:11):
own system, and tailors of Alsega's time would have an
L wand, which is a length of L and that
had marks on it to break down the various fractional
lengths of the L, like a half and a quarter
and things like that. This all just sounds so easy
and straightforward and interchangeable with everyone's different patterns. I can't

(08:32):
even imagine. It's like if you we have a hard
enough time converting yards to meters in you know, modern
day stitching, but can you imagine if everybody were calling
it a yard but it was all different? Like, wait,
whose yard? What are you talking about? No, it's a
half yard, that's all you'll need. Yeah, but what yard?

(08:53):
I would lose my mind. In addition to this text,
which is not as six naorious one might desire, al
Sega's book also has so many patterns. It has one
hundred and thirty five in all, and they actually cover
a wide range of clothing categories. There are garment patterns
for both women and men, like capes and trousers and dresses,

(09:16):
but there are also items that fall into very specific
use groupings. For example, there is a section on garments
that the clergy would need. There are clothes for jousting
and even things like Turkish clothing for lifting. There's rope
de la trado d'panno that's lawyer's clothing, and there's even
a bathrobe set. It is a very comprehensive set of

(09:38):
blocks for any stitcher who may need to clothe all
kinds of people. So having been calling these diagrams patterns
all this time that Tracy and I have been talking
is actually a little bit incorrect, because they are what's
called a block. A block is a set of basic
pieces that are not exactly patterns. They look very much
like a pattern, but they're really more like te blitz

(10:00):
that patterns can be drafted from. They don't have seam allowance.
They kind of represent the exact shape of the body,
so if you were to tape them together edge to edge,
it would theoretically look like the shell of a person. Blocks,
by the way, are also called slopers. Those words get
used pretty interchangeably, and these are still used by pattern
makers today to make patterns for all sorts of garments.

(10:23):
So in skilled hands, a good set of blocks becomes
the foundation for an entire library of potentially very different
looking pattern designs. We'll talk about some of those pattern
layouts after we pause or a sponsor break. Some of

(10:47):
the blocks in al Saga's book are fairly simple. For example,
there is one pattern block for some of the capa
Solas d' Pagno. Those are cloth capes in the book,
and those just have three pieces with instructions for cutting
some of the pieces on the fold. It looks very
similar to the way you'd see a pattern in a
modern pattern instance, although again you would have to add

(11:09):
seam allowance, but others have many pieces for creating much
more tailored garments. And of note too, is that these
are not graded for multiple sizes. Right. If you've ever
bought a commercial pattern today, you'll see multiple cutting lines
for different sizes. But these are really what are considered
base size blocks, intended to represent the average sized person,

(11:34):
whatever that means. It would be up to the person
using the book to then make any necessary alterations to
those blocks and the resulting patterns to suit the size
and shape of the person that a garment was being
made for. And in a very smart move in terms
of how the book would be used, it's a book
that was very short and very wide, with binding along

(11:56):
the short edge, and that made it really easy for
the user to keep the book open while working without
risking the page's flipping due to how tight the binding was.
The real accomplishment of Alcega's book was that it opened
the door to the idea that Taylor's manuals could even
be a thing, and Spain continued to lead the way
in printing instructional sewing books for almost a century. In

(12:21):
fifteen eighty eight, another Spanish book, Geometry and Design for
the Taylor's Trade, was published and written by a tailor
named Diego de Fryla. It's very similar to al Sega's
book in terms of layout and organization, including the binding
style that lays open more easily than a traditional sized book.
One of the ways Frela's work diverges from his predecessor

(12:43):
is in the unit of measurement used instead of the
l Frela uses. The vara and Navara had actually become
Spain's official standard of measurement in fifteen sixty eight, so
even before al Sega's book came out, but by fifteen
eighty eight, when Frela published, it had become more and
more commonly used and finally replaced that very haphazard assortment

(13:04):
of measures used in Spain by various municipalities. Incidentally, Avara
is actually pretty close to a yard at just under
thirty three inches, so that's zero point eight three six
meters long. Frila also addressed something that had come up
when Alcega published his book and which applied to his
own work as well. And sharing all of this information

(13:28):
and these pattern blocks both tailors were perceived by some
members of their trade as basically blabbing professional secrets. The
knowledge that had for centuries been passed down through the
apprentice system was suddenly available to anyone who could get
one of these books. But Frila defended the publications by
explaining that the information he was sharing was to the

(13:50):
benefit of the public financially and to the tailor profession reputationally.
It wasn't very likely that a novice would plant a
train's tailor just by having a book full of blocks.
But if people who had their clothes made by tailors
understood more about the process, including how much fabric various

(14:12):
garments require, it would prevent them from being taken advantage
of by unscrupulous vendors, and that would help maintain the
integrity of the trade. As far as we know. It
actually wasn't until sixteen seventy one that the French started
publishing patterns, which began with a book titled The Sincere
Tailor that was written by Benoi Boulay, and the full

(14:35):
title of this book translated is The Sincere Tailor, containing
what must be observed to correctly, trace, cut, and assemble
all the principal pieces which are made in the tailor's profession.
And in the opening of the book, Boulay invokes God
as the reason he is a tailor, writing quote, when
God calls us into some profession or some job, we
must consider it as something that divine providence has established.

(14:59):
Man is a block to spend his life in this work.
Like the Spanish examples we've mentioned, this has a wide
range of patterns and mentions the ease of use of
some of them in their accompanying text. For example, one
rogue pattern is described this way quote, The said dress
is made in the manner that I represented in the

(15:19):
figure below, and to cut it one has very few measurements.
To take. One only needs the length, which should only
go to four fingers from the ground, the thickness, and
the seams must be loose on the body. The tellure
since there, has been so popular with costumers and clothing
historians that patterns from it were being reproduced into the

(15:41):
twentieth century. In the book Period Patterns published in nineteen
forty two and written by Doris Edson and Lucy Barton
in English. The first book that included patterns was The
Tailor's Complete Guide, that did not come out until seventeen
sixty nine. An attribution here is hazy. Advertisements for the

(16:02):
guide describe it as the work of Quote, a society
of adepts in the profession, and the goal of the
book was to address the common problems of misfitting. Getting
a garment to sit perfectly on a human body can
be very tricky, particularly because, in addition to just being
different shapes, people are not statues, and their movements will

(16:23):
shift the garment around as they go through their day
to day lives. And apparently the tailors of England were
really struggling with this issue at the end of the
eighteenth century. But this book maybe didn't achieve its goal
because it was heavily criticized as late as one hundred
years later by another English tailor named Edward B. Giles,
who noted in his own book about the history of

(16:43):
tailoring that Quote its issue could only be warranted by
the non existence of any other published method, and in
those circumstances it was better than none. At all. As
for the US, the first entry into the market of
tailoring books that featured patterns was The Tailor's Instructor in
eighteen oh nine. This publication, written by Philadelphia taylors William

(17:06):
Lapsi and James Queen, has the marvelously long alternate title
of A Comprehensive Analysis of the Elements of Cutting Garments
of every kind, to which are added directions for cutting
various articles of dress for both sexes without the usual
seams and regimentals of all descriptions with instructions for making

(17:29):
up work with accuracy and precision. What's really interesting here
is that Queen and Lapsie actually referenced the Taylor's Complete
Guide in their introduction, and like Edward Giles, they seem
to find it lacking. Their criticism of it is a
little more subtle, though, choosing to praise what came after
as better quote. The following work will no doubt produce

(17:52):
in your minds a degree of curiosity, as it is
the first of its kind that has made its appearance
in the United States, and we believe the second ever
known in the English language. The first was published in
London in the year seventeen ninety six, and received the
liberal patronage of the trade in general, not only for
its novelty, but for the interesting and useful instructions contained

(18:14):
there in. The one following was more judiciously executed, being
an improvement on the first, and exhibited one of the
briefest compens of instruction, both in cutting and making up
work of different kinds, so that from the master taylor
down to the youngest apprentice it proved interesting and useful.
This book begins with quite a bit of writing about

(18:35):
clothing theory, including the nature of fashion, writing quote the
eye will soon discriminate between the elegant contour and dress
of a complete gentleman and the extravagant whimsies of a
city fop. These are great considerations in the articles of dress,
the former being the result of grace, sensibility, and refined experience,

(18:57):
the latter the extravagance of follow under the sanction of
the whim of fashion. And even before a single pattern appears.
In the first section, which is on outerwear, there's an
essay titled a Dissertation on coats. Then it gets into
a how to, still quite worthy, on measuring a thin
man for a single breasted coat and notes which measures

(19:20):
mapped to which figures in the drawings of pattern pieces
that follow, So not too bad in terms of conveying
the information needed to create clothing. All of these books, though,
were really prepared for the tailoring market and professionals more
than the at home stitcher, even though there were absolutely

(19:40):
likely a few non tailors who managed to access them
and perhaps learned a few tricks of the trade in
the process. This started to shift a bit in the
early to mid eighteen hundreds, as tailors were augmenting their
income by offering lessons to anyone who had the money
to enroll with them. This still wasn't usually a person
sewing for them, though it was in most cases tailors,

(20:03):
or would be tailors from rural areas who would travel,
for example, to London to learn from a pro. And
while this didn't democratize tailoring and pattern access for everyone,
it does mark another big step out from under the
umbrella of trade secrets that a lot of professionals still
believed in for centuries. Outside of this handful of publications

(20:25):
we've mentioned, specific pattern blocks were passed down through families
or through a shop's apprentice lines, and they were generally
pretty carefully guarded, but by the mid nineteenth century that
had all changed significantly. More and more books on tailoring
started to come out, and some even offered early grading
systems to try to help address the needs of multiple

(20:47):
sizes to aid in customized fittings without needing to draft
brand new slopers. As this loosening of trade secrecy grew
more common, periodicals dedicated to tailoring also started to emerge,
with patterns for women as well as men, and tissue
patterns started to be sold in England, first as standalone
items advertised in magazines and then included as inserts in

(21:11):
those magazines. We are about to get to sewing books
that were targeted to women in just a moment, but
first we will hear from the sponsors that keep stuffymus
in history class Going. Books specifically published for women home

(21:33):
sists started to appear on the market as early as
the seventeen nineties, but these were often less about fashion
and more about utility or in some cases even charity.
For example, the first known of these was titled Instructions
for Cutting Out Apparel for the Poor, so this didn't
have patterns so much as directions for how to use

(21:54):
basic rectangle cuts to create very simple clothing for people
who just needed something to cover them. There was no
fashion in the mix at all. Similarly, the eighteen oh
eight publication of The Ladies' Economical Assistant did feature actual patterns,
but they were no frills, extra basic patterns. Right. You
weren't going to find any pockets anywhere, and you weren't

(22:16):
going to find any lines for placement of trims. And
a lot of these patterns were actually for children, so
that mothers could just keep their babies clothed. Again, not
so much about fashion. In the book The History of
the Paper Pattern Industry, which came out in twenty fourteen,
Joyce spanbell Emery notes that it's entirely possible that full

(22:37):
sized patterns for women's garments were available as early as
the eighteen thirties. There were ads and magazines for patterns
that were available to purchase at retailers, but there aren't
any known surviving examples of such patterns. As most patterns
were still issued in small scale and needed to be
hand enlarged. A lot of companies developed their own in

(22:59):
large systems to go along with proprietary patterned diagrams, so
by using any given system. Home stitchers and professional dressmakers
were assured by the manufacturer that they would have the
greatest ease of success. Magazines that were focused on women's
garment sewing started to circulate in the second and third

(23:20):
decades of the eighteen hundreds. The World of Fashion began
publishing in London in eighteen twenty nine. This was a
magazine that wasn't so much about sewing a dress as
it was about informing readers about fashion trends. It featured
color plates at the front and then text in the
main pages describing and commenting on the clothes represented in

(23:42):
those opening pages. For example, in one entry in the
January eighteen twenty nine issue, there's this write up about headwear.
Quote caps Lapont and Ala Psyche constitute the most favorite headdresses.
The former has the pawn ornament in front of splendid
blonde and very narrow pink satin rulo, under which is

(24:05):
the stiffening which keeps the areola so formed in shape.
This gap is tastefully but slightly ornamented with white gauze
striped ribbon and in front next the hair with full
blown roses. The call is of tool finished by pink
and white satin ribbon. Tila Grek, a psyche cap of

(24:26):
toul and very broad blonde of a most superb pattern,
is entitled to a high degree of admiration. It is
ornamented across the front with half a wreath of damask
roses and those of Jericho in full bloom, and the
same flowers cross the crown. Behind the strings are of
white gauze ribbon, finished at the edges by a border

(24:47):
in a Greek pattern. The magazine also included information on
what fashions were popular in London, Paris and other places
including Russia. It also had features on more standard news
like births and deaths in prominent families. While the World
of Fashion taught more about style than stitching, a book

(25:09):
came out a decade later titled The Workwoman's Guide, containing
instructions to the inexperienced in cutting out and completing those
articles of wearing apparel, et cetera which are usually made
at home. Also explanations on upholstery, straw platting, bonnet making, knitting, etc.
This volume, attributed simply to a lady, was very clearly

(25:32):
intended to share practical and comprehensive information on how to
make clothing and home goods for almost anything you would
need for a fully stalked wardrobe and linen closet. The
preface notes as much, stating quote, the author of the
following pages has been encouraged to hope that in placing them,
after much deliberation, in the hands of a printer, she

(25:53):
is tendering an important and acceptable, however humble, service to
persons of her own sex, who, in any condition of life,
are engaged by duty or inclination, in cutting out wearing
apparel in a family or for their poorer neighbors. She trusts,
in particular that clergymen's wives, young married women's schoolmistresses, and

(26:14):
ladies maids may find in the Workwoman's Guide a fast
and serviceable friend. The first chapter teaches basic sewing, covering stitches,
and how to finish garments. Subsequent chapters focus on materials,
setting up a sewing basket, and how to properly cut
fabric for clothing before it gets into actual patterns, including

(26:35):
perhaps Holly's favorite piece of advice quote, cutting out whole
sets of things together often prevents much waste. Hence, it
is better to cut out six or twelve shirts at
once than only one at a time. Uh. That's good advice,
y'all if you sew listen to a lady, even if
all of her advice is super gendered. Once the book

(26:58):
gets to the pattern sections, it is robust. There are
chapters that cover kids clothes, women's clothes, and men's clothes,
all from your base layer your undergarments up to accessories,
along with pattern diagrams for enlargement. There is also a
chapter titled Receipts meaning recipes in this context that has

(27:19):
directions to make everything from inks to mark clothing and
fabric to cleaning solutions. I was unable to find any
information on exactly how many copies of this book were published, though,
so while it actually would have been incredibly useful, it
isn't clear how many people would have owned a copy.
It was a British publication that was printed in London

(27:40):
in eighteen thirty eight by Simpkin Marshaling Company. Not long
after that publishing house moved their company into a larger
office that actually became a huge publishing company for a while,
but this was one of their earlier publications, so it
seems a little unlikely that there would have been a
huge number of copies printed. A lot of the contents
of the book, though, were reprinted in the US in

(28:02):
women's magazines. One of the developments that impacted the success
of patterns for home use in the US, also noted
by Emery in her book, is the eighteen forty five
expansion of the US Postal Service. This made postage cheaper,
and it also opened up the mail not just to letters,
but also, per the bill that was approved by Congress,

(28:23):
quote circulars and handbills or advertisements, as well as other materials.
So the stage was set for mail order businesses, which
was perfect for pattern distribution. According to an article in
the Journal of American History that was written by Margaret
Walsh in nineteen seventy nine, in the eighteen fifties in
the US, we see a three tiered hierarchy of clothing options.

(28:48):
The top tier was bespoke garments crafted by boutique artisans
for people who had a lot of money. The middle
range was clothing that was created by dressmakers but who
were operating as sort of trades level small businesses rather
than fashion houses, so their customers were generally the middle class.
And then the third tier was clothing that was made
by the home stitcher, and while many homestitchers are and

(29:12):
have been historically very skilled, I'm not knocking the homestitcher obviously.
In general, the garments, though in this third tier, were
of inferior quality to the other two, but that had
less to do with stitching skill than it did with
the rather different skill of draping and pattern making. If
you've ever done any garment sewing, this makes a lot

(29:32):
of sense. The people in the top two tiers had
years of experience and their own libraries of garment blocks.
While there were some books and patterns hitting the market,
a lot of home sewists had to kind of guess
at how fabric had to be cut to create clothing.
If they did have access to books or periodicals about sewing,

(29:52):
there was still a good bit of guesswork. It was
and still is possible for a person to take a
part an exis garment and use the pieces of that
as a pattern, but even then it's imprecise because the
years of where that a garment has had will have
warped or stretched some of the pieces, and just taking

(30:12):
it apart would probably compromise some of the components or
change their shapes. But the late eighteen fifties was when
the first sewing machines intended for home use were introduced,
so we of course talked about this in our twenty
thirteen episode The Contentious Invention of the Sewing Machine that
ran as a Saturday Classic on August nineteenth of twenty seventeen.

(30:34):
And sewing machines enabled dressmakers and homestitchers to create clothing
that had cleaner finishes and look sharper and more professional.
The highest level fashion tier, though, we should note, continued
to tout its fine hand sewing, and that is actually
still the case in many instances today. Couture fashion houses,
for example, employ a lot of artisans who are extremely

(30:57):
skilled at handwork. But despite the production of the sewing machine,
there were still hurdles in the way of easy access
DIY fashion. A lot of patterns were distributed in diagram
form in periodicals, as we mentioned earlier, so readers would
have to scale them up by hand to use them.

(31:18):
This is a tricky process and it meant that the
resulting pattern was likely to have some faults that needed
correcting once the garment was actually stitched up. There were
some full sized paper patterns available, but not that many,
and often they either came in a basic generic size
that had to be altered, or they might come directly
from a dressmaker drafter to the stitcher's measurements. That meant

(31:42):
a greater expense, though, and it seems to have been
a more unusual path. Yeah, I did find a couple
of advertisements for that, but I would imagine most people
that were stitching their own clothes were not willing to
take on the extra expense of having someone else draft
the pattern. Another factor that made pattern use at large

(32:02):
a bit of a challenge in the mid eighteen hundreds
was a rapidly shifting silhouette in fashion for women. In
the years before that, a lot of the pieces of
address started out still mostly rectangular, like if you look
at the ampere waists that were popular before then, and
then they were altered through darts and gathers to shape
to the body. But in the mid nineteenth century that

(32:25):
all really started to change, and it happened very quickly,
so more tailored cuts became fashionable, and that necessitated much
more specialized pattern pieces, and this means that people needed
not only patterns, they also needed more education on how
to assemble those patterns into clothing, and to meet that demand,

(32:45):
instructional books began to appear on the market in Europe
and the US. One such book was eighteen forty nine
The Art of Dressmaking, containing plain directions in simple language
from the fitting of the pattern to the finish of
the by Eliza and Corey. She signs her dedication, which
is to her cousin, as Eliza Ann, but her name

(33:08):
on the title page is only given as Missus Corey.
This book doesn't actually give much in the way of patterns.
It features diagrams of only two pieces, a half back
and a half front, and then the rest of the
book is text explaining how to measure a person and
then adjust those two pieces to customize them. But really

(33:28):
it's mostly suggesting how to use a method people had
been using for a long time already. It starts the
instructions with quote supposing the reader to have no idea
of cutting the first patterns, she is requested to take
the body of an old dress and pick it to pieces. When,
if made with a single plat, the half front will

(33:49):
be found something in the form shown in the frontispiece
of this little manual. The half front is then to
be laid upon a piece of undressed Holland and a
pattern cut from it. It must be remembered that this
is not the pattern to work from, but only a
necessary preliminary groundwork on which to take the paper or

(34:09):
working pattern. Viewed through today's lens, when there are video
tutorials for almost anything you might want to make, books
like the Art of Dressmaking don't actually seem very helpful
or informative. There was a lot of assuming that the
reader would be able to kind of figure out some
things for themselves. There was pretty clearly a gap in

(34:32):
the available patterns that would enable people to make their
own fashionable clothes. Two people were highly instrumental in developing
an industry of affordable, size graded patterns for home soists
in the second half of the nineteenth century in the
United States. Those were Ellen, Curtis Demorist and Ebenezer Butterick.

(34:54):
And we're going to talk about them and other people
in the industry on our next installment this episode. Meanwhile,
do you have listener mail? Mees correct? My first piece
of listener mail is from our listener Ellen, who is
talking about her encounter with Beerstatt's last of the Buffalo,

(35:16):
and Ellen writes, Hi, Holly and Tracy, longtime listener and
first time writer. Your wonderful podcast has gotten me through
many hours of cleaning stalls, painting walls, and long road trips.
I just finished listening to your episode on Albert Berstatt,
and I was so excited to realize while listening to
the episode, I had seen some of his art in person. Recently,
we took a family trip to Washington, d C. And

(35:38):
as part of the trip toured the National Gallery, where
I was struck by the painting The Last of the Buffalo.
It is a massive work of art and has a
very nice plaque next to it describing how the hunting
of American bison by European settlers decimated the species. My
initial reaction to the painting was the opposite of what
y'all point out in the episode. I saw the lone

(35:59):
figure of the indigenous hunter as included in the lament,
and not the cause of the death of the bison.
Just an example of how art can speak different messages
to different people, I suppose. Frankly, I love your read
way better, Ellen. I really enjoy learning about the different
artists as part of the history podcast y'all put out,
and I hope you continue to include them in your rotation.

(36:19):
Listen safe, bet I'll talk about an artist any day.
Ellen then gives a suggestion of a cool topic and
then puts pet tax and it is some photos, she says,
of my horses I raise show prospects for Western performance riding.
And let me tell you, horses are not so majestic
all of the time. I've tried to include a few
photos to show you. One of these photos is of

(36:40):
this gorgeous horse wearing a baseball cap, which is the
cutest thing I've maybe ever seen. There is another of
just a beautiful horse kind of standing before a gorgeous sunset.
That's a beautiful, beautiful combination of images. There is a
very cute baby horse in this, but he already has
a little go tea, which I love. He or she

(37:02):
and some horses eating these are all such beauties. Horses
are so pretty. A bicolor horse that's absolutely gorgeous, and
one that is a like a buff colored horse, like
an ivory colored horse making the horsiest horse face like
it's a face that if you drew it and said
it was a horse, people would be like have you
seen a horse, but horses make that face? I love

(37:25):
it so much. And Ellen, I love that you pointed
out that you know, art is interpreted differently by different people,
And like I said, I like your read of that
painting better than what it actually seemed to be about,
at least according to Beerstot and many people at the time.
So if you would like to write to us and
share your takes on art that we've talked about or not,

(37:47):
and animals being very silly, which is one of my
favorite flavors of animal pictures, you can do so at
History Podcast at iHeartRadio dot com. You can also subscribe
to the podcast on the iHeartRadio app wherever you listen
to your favorite shows. Stuff you Missed in History Class

(38:08):
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