Now that I’ve got all the photography done, it’s time to pick up where we left off in The Basic Conical Torso Block (Part 1). We’re completing a basic torso block that we can use for the simplified, conical torsos popular in Renaissance, Elizabethan, Jacobean, Pompadour, Colonial, and all other eras between the Sixteenth and Eighteenth centuries. (She says, throwing as many keywords into one sentence as humanly possible.) One block, three hundred years of fashion – how can you lose?
Please note, again, that I am working with a 16″ fashion doll for ease of picture taking (and model time scheduling). She’s a Tonner/Effanbee Brenda Starr, in case anyone is doll shopping.
Preparing for Fitting
You could simply tape all your little triangles shut, tape a few long strips on to the strap stubs, and try to do the fitting with your nice, floppy piece of paper. I’d advise against it (even when working with doll sizes) for three simple reasons. First, all that tape looks a mess. Secondly, paper is floppy, apt to tear or crease oddly, and generally ill-suited for even the most rudimentary fit-checks. Thirdly, when we cut out the block, we only cut half of it and didn’t leave any extra for changes to the fit. That will make for some troubles if everything isn’t perfect. And trust me, things are seldom ever perfect on the first go. (If I thought it would be, we wouldn’t be talking about fittings, would we?)
Next: Adding the straps…
The links to pages 2-5 seem to be broken … they all lead back to the start of page 1. (Same for the Part 1 entry).
:(
Hey, wow, that’s a good point – *all* of my paginated posts are broken. I’m looking into it now.
Aaaaalllllright, then. Fixed. That took entirely too long.
< civic geekery >
Note to the collective human knowledgebase known as the web: After upgrading to WordPress 3.0, my permalink structure (/%category%/%postname%/) with my marvelously nested category structure became too much for the wordpress/mod_rewrite engine to handle. Links within paginated posts automatically redirected to the post permalink, and all page information was stubbornly dropped from the link. On the advice of a terribly clever fellow at http://www.weberz.com/blog/2009/06/seo-experts-give-wrong-advice-wordpress-permalinks , I changed my permalink structure to /%year%/%postname%/ – still readable, faster, and most importantly, it fixes the problem.
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Where do you get such big poster board to do this for human-size? I got the standard size they sell for 99 cents at the pharmacy, and I’m a pretty tiny person, and I can’t do that with the center line. I’m going to be cutting two pieces and taping them together.
You can find larger poster board than that at most art stores – (including Hobby Lobby, Blick, Michaels, etc) and any place that caters to students (walgreens, target, kmart, walmart-even-thought-I’m-still-boycotting), and often also at JoAnn’s.
Hope that helps….
THANK YOU so much for sharing your knowledge with us. <3
And thank you for reading and commenting! :)
Hello! I have no idea if you’re still active but if you are, do you have any tips on how to turn this block into a waistcoat pattern?
The specifics depend a lot on the era that the waistcoat is for. In general, though, you’re going to be putting the center front, side front, and possibly side-back pieces together into one panel for the fronts. The center back (or center and side back, if side back was not added to the front panel) will become the back panel. Shaping generally moves to the center front seam, and possibly to the side-back seam.
That’s actually a really good question. I’ll see if I can get some time to play around with this. :)
Thank you for such a great tutorial. I’m eager to try this out.
Just discovered and made the block and Wench bodice! It worked really well ,thank you for posting!