Overview and Drafting a Blacksmith Shirt

Service Description

ADULTS Only. Held in the San Felasco room. (walk from the lobby toward the ball room but turn right and look for the room on your left). Geared towards helping the beginning/intermediate historical tailor to understand how to take measurements off of a person and translate those numbers into a pattern and then a garment. This is a first step to making your own custom garments from start to finish. We will discuss a basic overview of shirt styles of the 16th and 17th centuries with common collar and cuff variants and then get to work. Crissy Brillant will physically demonstrate taking torso measurements and have you pair off with classmates to assist each other in completing your charts. Then we will go through the steps of drafting a Front, Back, and Sleeve. Once those basic pattern pieces are done, we can cut out a mockup, assemble and check the fit. I’ll teach you how to analyze common fitting problems and show you how to solve them. Supplies for the class included. Sewing machines available. Handy to have but not necessary: a notebook and writing utensil or two, Sewer’s French curve, fabric scissors, 4-5 yards natural fiber fabric for a final shirt. Crissy Brillant is a Historical Tailor who has made everything from Egyptian to Victorian. She primarily focuses on European clothing of the 15th-16th centuries. She makes clothing for performers at Renaissance Faires and Re-enactors of all centuries. As such, she is quite familiar with the use and abuse of everyday clothing in historical settings! Her love and passion for making people look like they stepped out of a painting pushes her to analyze the cut and drape of cloth to match the visuals, her knowledge of historical fabrics allows her to select the right weight and look for a garment, but it is her extensive studies of patterning in a historical manner and fitting modern bodies that drive her passions.