Grade sewing patterns - help us dress diverse bodies in historic garments to bring history alive!

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We need your eye for symmetry and artful presentation, ability to draw the eye to specific details while discreetly shielding others from attention, and knack for framing things to tell a story.

Garments tell us so much about a person, their situation, the society they live in; we are often able to identify specific individuals, details about their lives and experiences, just from what they wear. But it's not actually the physical garments - it's how those garments relate to the body they are on. It's the difference between a baby dressed as Elvis, and a baby dressed in Elvis' actual clothes. No matter how authentic, historically accurate, or painstakingly constructed an outfit is, it can't tell the story of the original wearer unless it can be worn in the same way they wore it.

We've worked hard for nearly 50 years to bring historic events to life, studying real artifacts from museums and collections to draft patterns for our "living historians" to wear during our educational programming.

Efforts to expand our programming and volunteer pool have been stymied by expanding waistlines and increasingly diverse body structures. It's become a frustrating guess-and-check process to outfit bodies that differ from historic body ratios, consuming not only time and material, but putting strain on the dignity of our diverse volunteers as well.



It's burning out our volunteer seamstresses/tailors, it's causing safety concerns when range of motion is restricted, and it's embarrassing not to be able to reliably enable a volunteer to effectively do the work they love.

What you can do to help:

• Artists, Digital Designers, Photoshop Magicians, etc al: Help us
  • visualize what an outfit looks like on different body types
  • imagine what changes would give the same impression across multiple body types
• Digital designrs, Photoshop Magicians, Touchup artists and the like:
  • enable us to view multiple comine
• Photographers, Fashion designers,
  • provide insight on where focus is drawn, what features should be emphasized or minimzed, and what to prioritize to help achieve the desired visual effect
• Costumers, Wardrobe and Makeup artists, Animators, Story boarders and writers, t
  • What do we need to Provide insight for modifications in construction that can help achieve the desired visual effect
  • What indicators help identify situations where it might be better to consider modifying the story to fit the actor, or putting the actor in a different role entirely?
• talent scouts recruiters, agents, fashion designers :
  
  • what details can have the most influence over an audience's interpretation of the story you're trying to tell?
  • how can modifications to the environment help or hinder communication of a message, and hw can we apply them ?
    • viewer's angle, distance, medium, duration,
    • lighting/shadows, surroundings, actions, posture, movements
• Performers, staging blockers, dancers, instructors, directors, talent: given some of the varying venues and scenarios we encounter, what suggestions to you have?

• Tailors, seamstresses, cutters, drafters, and other craftsmen: help us figure out how to make these things! We could really use your assistance/guidance/instruction as we work to create:
  • A set of graded patterns that encompass a broad range of modern body types
  • A purpose-written troubleshooting guide for fit problems we are most likely to encounter

Our current method has us drafting a basic body sloper for each person, then fussing with your basic cut-and-spread type techniques in efforts to map the historic pattern onto the sloper, cutting very generous seam allowances, doing up several muslins, and in the end up we're still essentially relying on draping by eye in attempts to get things to fall correctly.