The style of English language has evolved over the years, which sometimes makes reading old texts slightly challenging. A well-written text, though, will not present a problem to the modern reader. Unfortunately, this is not one of them. For just about every sentence I’ve read so far — and I haven’t got very far — I’ve come up with about three interpretations of Mrs C’s instructions before I’ve hit on (what I think is) the right one.

The meandering post after the jump is my thought process as I tried to follow the instructions in the book. The first part was done very late at night, right after I had finished drafting a patent application, so I wasn’t in a mood to make allowances for ambiguity.

Here we go…

Take the measure of wrist between the wrist joint and hand.

Okay, good, got that. Six inches. Ooh! Sounds petite!

With one point of the compass at A, draw a quadrant A B C, to the size of wrist measure,

And so soon, here’s where it started to break down for me. Is it the entire perimeter of the quadrant — two radii plus an arc — that she means should equal my wrist measurement? Or just the arc? Or the radius? Is it because it’s late and I’m overthinking this?

Fortunately, on the following page, she does indicate that “A B is size of wrist” which suggests that I should be drawing a quadrant with a 6 inch radius. So here’s our first quadrant:

next with the arc B C, increase the figure to D E, that being the line, or circle on which the length of back and size of waist both, are described.

Yeah. So now, I’m supposed to draw another quadrant with center A and larger radius, but this new radius is a mystery. “[N]ext with the arc B C” could mean following the shape of BC, measuring from the points B and C, with the common center A, or using the length of arc BC… which is it?

Figure 1 in the book — and there’s nothing to say it’s to scale — suggests that we’re not doubling it. Reading ahead, it seems that the arc of this new quadrant, DE, is supposed to correspond with the length of the back in one example involving the “2nd order and 3d class” (meaning you’d use DE to separately work out the waist).

At this point, I did a little figuring by computing the resultant radius if DE was equal to my back waist length (which is about 15.5 inches), and guessed that she meant that I was supposed to use a radius equal to the length of arc BC, which is approximately 9.42 inches:

The length of back is determined by adding 1 2 and 3, parts of the measure — by part is meant one-sixth — of wrist measure — to the arc D E, or taking 1 and 2 parts from said arc.

If you’ve looked at the book diagram, you know that there are no less than three points, each labelled 1, 2, and 3. After about ten minutes of inward ranting, I combined this with the one-sixth reference to arrive at “The length of the back is determined by adding one-sixth, two-sixths, or three-sixths of the wrist measure to the arc DE, or taking one-sixth or two-sixths from said arc.” And this interpretation makes sense, because…

These different lengths of back make the different classes to which bodies may belong, there being six in number, as designated by the numbers written thereon, nearest the point E.

… And the Number of the Back shall be 6! Ahahahahaha. Did anyone else find that funny? I found that funny. But it’s after 1 a.m. and I’m trying to decipher incomplete instructions on how to draft patterns from my wrist measurement.

What I gather from this is that to determine your back length measurement from DE, is that you actually need to select one of six values:

• length of DE minus 2/6 of wrist measurement
• length of DE minus 1/6 of wrist measurement
• length of DE
• length of DE plus 1/6 of wrist measurement
• length of DE plus 2/6 of wrist measurement
• length of DE plus 3/6 of wrist measurement

This is indicated in Figure 1 by those short horizontal line segments that are around point E: note that “3″ is right on the line defined by AE, meaning that you take the length of DE if you fit that class.

So in fact, we need two measurements; we need to know our back waist measurement in order to classify the body. My actual back waist length is about 14.5 inches or so. When I need to estimate my back waist length in practice, I seldom use that because I don’t actually wear skirts and trousers that fit around my actual waist (at least, not when I can avoid it); garments that hang from a lower point on my torso are more comfortable, so I estimate the length of tops to cover up the rest of the torso accordingly.

But based on my “real” back waist length, I’m roughly in the third class because DE is equal to approximately 14.8 inches.

After getting the correct length of back, with one-fourth of it increase the circle a third time, making the line F A.

One quarter of 14.8 inches is 3.7 inches, or a length FA of 13.1 inches. (In case you haven’t figured it out, I’m rounding to three significant digits.)

The size of waist is determined by adding fractional parts of the wrist to the arc B C, or elbow measure, the smallest size having one part added, the second in size having two parts added, and so on, until the whole wrist measure is added for the largest size; that makes one-half of the waist.

At this point, I puzzled over whether I was meant to determine my waist according to my “size” as determined by how I determined my back length “class”, or if I was meant to take yet another measurement, meaning that Mrs C’s method is actually driven by three body measurements, not just one.

After some sleep, I realized I should proceed with my actual waist measurement. Beginning at the bottom of page 12, she says:

The waist measures, which are seven in number, denote the different orders to which a body may belong. I will here state that bodies belonging to the 6th class, as well as the first order, are extreme cases, and are rarely seen.

These “orders” are determined with how well the person’s body complies with these gynametric rules, but they must be different than the “classes” previously described with respect to back length, because there are seven of these waist orders and six back classes. (Therefore, she is saying that it is unusual to be in the first waist order, or smallest waist size; for my numbers, that would have been an 18.8 inch waist. It is furthermore unusual to have an extraordinarily long back waist length, which with my numbers would have been 17.8 inches. I’ll agree with her there.)

Based on this, then, I start with BC (9.42 inches) and I need to arrive at 13.5 inches, which is half of my actual waist. That puts me between the fourth order, adding fourth-sixths of my wrist measurement (13.42 inches total) and the fifth order (14.42 inches); we’ll go with the fourth order, or 13.42 inches.

Although gynametry may claim to predict certain body measurements from a single bone measurement, it certainly can’t predict all of the measurements required to draft a pattern without some help. Considering the ambiguity of Mrs C’s instructions, it’s not surprising that I missed this point; what she actually said on page 10 is:

… it is necessary only to use one measure to obtain a circle, and that another, or but one measure is required to obtain the size of the various parts, and consequently of the entire body. (emphasis added)

That suggests that only two measurements are required. Two, three, close enough.

Moving on:

After the correct waist measure is ascertained, with one-fourth of waist proper, measure on line D E from point D to its terminus, then dot, draw the intersecting line from A to said dot, letting it continue to line E G.

One-fourth of my waist proper (we’re pretending that’s 26.8 inches, based on the fourth order of the waist, which is fine; I haven’t eaten much today yet) is 6.7 inches. Therefore, I draw a chord from point D, and use that point of intersection with DE to draw a line segment from A to the arc beginning at F:

I didn’t measure the diagram to get the length of arc FG. I used the cosine rule. The angle formed by DAG is 41.7°, therefore arc FG is 41.7/360 times the circumference of circle with radius AF, or 9.54 inches.

The numbers written on line D E nearest its centre denote the different waist measures of any given wrist, while the figures on line F G denote the bust measure of its corresponding waist. I do not mean the actual measure of the bust around the figure, but it is a dividing measure between the bust and hips.

The first bit there corresponds to what we worked about about the seven waist classes; my diagram, above, reflects only the line that represents my measurements (it would be the intersection labelled “4″ at arc DE). Strangely, in the example given on page 13, Mrs C says that “[f]rom D to Q is 1/4 of waist”… Q? Where did Q come from? We know from from following the previous directions that one-quarter of the waist is the chord that we drew from D.

This means that the measure of FG in my diagram should be my “dividing measure between the bust and hips”… but on page 13, Mrs C also says that the length FG is the quarter-bust measure (while she is working out an example on page 13, the meaning of FG should not change).

Granted, because of the ambiguity in her writing, I do not know if she means the arc length FG, or the line segment FG. Turning to the example on page 13 again, she seems to be using different wording to distinguish line segments (“[f]rom D to Q”) from arcs (“A B is size of wrist”). I conclude that she means the line segment FG is the quarter-bust measurement; if it were the arc, that would make the full bust measurement about 38 inches, but the segment is 9.33 inches, for a full bust measurement of 37.3 inches.

From the example on page 13, this diagram fills in some dimensions:

Note that the “waist to hip joint” is not the distance between the waist and the widest part of the hip, it’s to the pelvis bone.

If you recall that Mrs C described that being in the second order and the third class was most common, I’m partly there: I’m in the third class, but I’m in the fourth order. But I still don’t match up to her numbers:

Note that describing DE as an arc defined by a circle quadrant is slightly misleading; the curve DE is definitely the back waist length, since it was measured, but for some people it will be short of a full quarter-circle, and for others it will be a quarter-circle plus a little extra. Because I’m not clear what the waist-to-hip-joint is really supposed to represent, I can only say that it looks like it’s in the right ballpark.

Generally, because I was in the fourth order, thanks to my waist measurement, the measurements gynametrically derived from the waist measurement were all off because the classification of orders according to actual waist measurement inform the inner arm, hand, and skirt length calculations.

If I could have called myself second order, then it looks like some of those figures would have worked. You can see that I made the assumption that based on her worked example, where she said “two parts” on page 13 she meant that because she was using a second-order example; if she meant those “two parts” to be fixed for all orders, though, the inner arm and the hand measurements would have been pretty good, and I’d be less likely to trip over my skirt (I wonder if the length made allowances for petticoats, etc.? I’d have to look at the pattern drafting instructions to find out).

This correction wouldn’t have helped the inaccuracy of the bust measurement, though. The bust measurement is based on the position of point G, which is determined by the intersection of the chord from D, the length of which was determined by the actual waist measurement. Based on this, I am apparently not as buxom as the ideal shape that Mrs C envisions… assuming I understood her instructions properly, of course!

(Yes, in case you didn’t know, stitching in the ditch is a term of art. It means to sew in the depression created by a seam, and it’s usually done to secure a layer of fabric in place on the underside. When you stitch in the ditch, your stitches are practically hidden on the public side.

And because I know you’d ask: yes, someone has a registered trademark in the US for STITCH & DITCH, for use with disposable papers used to stiffen fabric for embroidery. That’s cute.)

I used to be a sewer. I learned to sew long, long before I taught myself to knit. I learned to sew by watching my mother, who claimed she couldn’t teach me; she taught me how to thread her sewing machine, and she just demonstrated the rest, so I think she did just fine.

(My mother doesn’t really do sewing for crafty or artistic purposes, but rather to make clothes. As craft, she used to make macrame objets de folk art. There was this weird abstract wall hanging in avocado, orange, and brown at the top of the basement stairs; every year after November 11, my dad would pin his plastic Remembrance Day poppy on it. It was quite a collection by the time they disposed of that wall hanging. There was also a macrame dust collector Santa Claus wall hanging with a fringed beard. I sneezed whenever I passed it.

My mother also crochets, but for some reason she just does not get the gauge or the choosing appropriate yarn thing and her eyes glaze over when I try to explain that if she makes this pullover with that yarn, she’ll either be crocheting a bulletproof fabric or making something that doesn’t fit. I hate to say it, but sometimes this problem translates to fabrics as well. I only recently managed to make her get rid of a pair of acid wash print trousers (that’s right, you read “acid wash print” and “trousers,” not “jeans”). I love her, but I’m glad I didn’t turn out the same way.

But I digress. I’ve been thinking about the clothing I used to sew. I used to make pretty good clothes — even interview-worthy suits. I think that I’ve made the outfit I’ve worn to every single formal event I’ve attended since grade 8. I had a pretty respectable fabric stash, and a nice little cache of vintage patterns (mostly 50s and 60s). And recently, I bought Cochenille’s Garment Designer for OS X to play with. (Garment Designer can do knitting patterns too, but I bought it for drafting sewing patterns. Given a choice, I prefer to draft knitting patterns by hand. I’ll probably write about why someday. But Cochenille’s customer service? Ace.)

I’ve been thinking about sewing recently because I’ve got the urge to start it up again, although I haven’t got the time. I recently bought some dark olive wool and pink Bemberg lining to make a suit from a 1950s Vogue pattern — not that I actually need another suit, much less a skirt suit, but it would be too adorable and if I had it, I could get rid of a couple of other ensembles gathering dust in the closet. I also recently made some extravagant (for me) purchases of clothing-related literature, which was actually the point of this post. You’ll need to follow the links below to see what I’m raving about here.

First, I bought Betty Kirke’s stellar history of Madeleine Vionnet. It was out of print, but it has now been reissued, again as an oversized hardcover (but a different cover than in the first edition). It’s not cheap, but it’s cheaper than it was as a first edition, and if you’re interested in Vionnet’s designs it is priceless. Vionnet did not draft patterns; she draped fabric on the body (actually, a half-scale doll), often on the bias to increase the fluidity of the fabric. As a result, her garments evolved from elementary shapes such as rectangles and circles, and every twist or fold of fabric, and every seamline, has a functional and aesthetic purpose: the clothing is deceptively simple in appearance, when in fact they were works of marvelous engineering. Her work deserves such a weighty tome. Kirke has provided enough information, including line drawings of pattern pieces, to replicate a number of Vionnet’s garments… but be warned, you’ll need to have a fairly decent skill set to do it successfully, including the ability to draft patterns, assess the adequacy of the pieces provided (additional pieces, like stays, facings, or collars, may be needed), and fit a muslin. To get an idea of the content of Kirke’s book, take a look at this page at the Kent State University Museum website — it’s an exhibition that includes some of Vionnet’s designs.

Also, from the KSU Museum , I ordered two catalogues: one from a 2000 Isabel & Ruben Toledo exhibition, which I knew about at the time because an article was published concurrently in Threads; and one from the current Chado Ralph Rucci exhibition. Unfortunately, not every item in the exhibitions appears in the catalogues — some of the Rucci items viewable online are not even in the physical exhibit themselves — but I wanted to have my own copies, anyway.

To me, Isabel Toledo’s approach to clothing design appears to be the opposite of Vionnet’s, yet they share a common theme. Toledo starts with a concept — geometry, origami, an aspect of the natural world — and then realizes it in fabric, using the human body as a frame. It’s like she’s treating the body as the means to an end: the body is a framework for displaying a textile sculpture, with the added benefit that the body is clothed along the way. Vionnet created sculptural clothing as well, but the female body underneath was paramount and dictated the form of the sculpture; if the body is the means to Toledo, then to Vionnet it was the end.

Rucci, on the other hand, I admire because of the purity of his style and his respect for the fabrics he uses. This is haute couture the way I think it should be: pure clothing, perfectly constructed from flawless materials, not created for shock value or to increase perfume and cosmetic sales, not slavishly following street trends. I will never be able to afford this clothing, but even if I could, I probably wouldn’t buy it, because that level of craftsmanship and design is something I’d like to accomplish myself. Instead, I’d spend all that money I saved by not buying Rucci on the materials that he uses — double-faced cashmere, silk gazar — and practising on them.

And time. I’d have to buy time.