1942—Modern Pattern Design
by Harriet Pepin

Author's Message to the Reader

THIS BOOK reveals the secrets of cutting smart patterns that professionals know will produce smart, graceful apparel. The pattern is the design for a garment. It is to the dress designer what the blue print is to the architect. Only well-cut garments have STYLE; and this style is achieved only through clever shaping, careful placing of the grain of the fabric, exaggeration of the silhouette at just the right point. As the pattern is, so the finished gown will be.

The book is, in no sense, a substitute for specialized classroom training in the art of pattern making. There is NO substitute for the close association and helpful criticism which a student enjoys under the personal supervision of an instructor. Neither is it to be construed as a substitute for valuable knowledge gained through those years of experience which form so integral a part in the growth and development of the creative mind. It is rather with the hope that it will prove of true value to the reader as guide and reference that the book is offered.

This volume should serve to freshen the knowledge of present-day designers who acquired training before the modern block system had reached its present stage of development and perfection. It should be valuable to manufacturers who see the importance of maintaining a library of reference manuals for their designers, so that methods for the production of such silhouettes as again return to fashion favor can be quickly confirmed. Or, this book will supplement knowledge acquired through tedious apprenticeship. It should be of pertinent value to dressmakers who have improvised their own methods for cutting patterns for customers' garments.

Hobbyists, not content to remain in the amateur ranks of "home sewers" who use the commercial patterns which provide the designs and styles for them, can, through careful study of this text and the consequent wording of its problems, attain a professional attitude in their work, thereby deriving greater pleasure and satisfaction from their efforts. The book will also aid them in the adaptation of commercial patterns to their own individual figure dimensions, through the use of a personal "block" pattern, which may be drafted from the instructions given in these pages. Home Economics instructors, aware of the steady change taking place in their field, will find that it contains much information which should be valuable in the teaching of young students who are adapting commercial patterns to uncertain figure proportions. Teachers in Vocational Schools will immediately recognize its value.

Many books and periodicals have been written devoted to home sewing methods, adjusting commercial patterns, alterations, and other phases of clothing construction. Information set forth in these pages is presented from the professional point of view. Both the technical steps of procedure in making patterns and the artistic principles employedhave been included and discussed. These pages reveal countless secrets which heretofore have been jealously guarded by fashion workers.

Facts in these pages have been set down in the manner they would be and have been given in verbal form to students enrolled in the classroom. When these pages were first assembled, they were intended to be used merely as a supplement for classroom instruction and demonstration. Methods of procedure which have been suggested and diagrammed are not essentially original. They are the result of years of experiment with many suggested methods. Undoubtedly, many still can be somewhat improved. It is the author's plan to revise this text in future editions that may serve to keep the subject matter currently up-to-date.

As early as the thirteenth century, an enterprising French tailor devised a crude set of basic patterns made from thin slabs of wood. From these, a few varieties of design could be developed which reflected the fashionable silhouette of that era. But the Guild of Tailors restrained him from commercializing his wood-pattern slabs—because, in so doing, he might reveal the secrets of their profession to the common classes. Even in this modern day, when so much depends upon the cultivation of our creative minds in America, we have modern versions of that "guild of tailors" We have craftsmen and creators who are jealously secretive of their knowledge. These shortsighted individuals fail to realize, however, that, though basic principles of a craft or art be made available to everyone, only a limited number of truly creative and artistic persons rise to recognition and leadership in the interpretation of this knowledge. And these few people, in each generation, receive recognition and tribute commensurate with their individual talent and ability.

Our modern "guild of tailors" overlooks the fact, too, that our present-day art has been endowed by the unselfish teachings of artists of a former day. Without this endowment, how little could our artistically gifted men and women of today reveal their talents! Costume designing is an art. As in all other related arts—painting, music, sculpture, architecture, and literature—ambitious students find much available reference material for supplementary reading. They acquire their first basic training in established schools; they go to museums and libraries to search further—to gain that deeper appreciation of what has been accomplished by artists before them.

With an honest modesty does the writer submit this "reference manual" as her initial contributory effort toward the development and cultivation of creative fashion design in America.

Harriet Pepin