Shooting Star Enterprises Historical Clothing Books

Patternmaking Manual | Bustle Era Skirt Pattern | Early Bustle Era Bodice Pattern

The Lady's Dressmaker-
The Late Bustle Era Bodice Manual

An expanded excerpt of The Lady's Dressmaker dealing specifically with bodice patterns for 1876-1889. This will be the textbook for my drafting class in my Historical Sewing Seminars.
The manual will include a coupon for $7.50 off the purchase of Le Maitresse Couturiere-The Lady's Dressmaker 1838-1900
found at bottom of page

$15 Downloadable version

I will send you an email with the pass for the protected
area of the pdf file
.

$25 Manual

Basic Bustle Era Skirt

Whether you need to dress for the ball, or a good sturdy dress for housework, this pattern will cover the basic bustle era skirt with adaptations to create most skirts from 1868-1888. The pattern includes 4 views: View A- A basic skirt great for work, walking or wear under a polonaise: View B- Early Bustle Era with a box pleated or gathered flounce; View C- 1876-1880 a slimmer style with several rows of shirring and a slight train; and View D Late Bustle era dress with a knife pleated ruffle and directions to make a foundation skirt. The pattern will also include Marna Jean's ruffle worksheet on how to figure the amount of fabric needed for nearly any type of ruffle desired.
*new*I have added a scalloped ruffle guide, book lined ruffle directions and plenty of historical notes.
$19 plus postage

Pattern included all sizes waist size 24-48"

Click on picture for enlarged view

Early Bustle Era Basic Bodice Pattern

This bodice is a simple front closing style with 5 basic pattern pieces- Bodice front, side-back and back, and upper and lower coat sleeve. It can be made in a basque or waist length and options include a cap sleeve for earlier era, a fashionable sash, neck ruffle.
$16 + postage
Make sure to note the size by bust measurement desired in the comments section.
Size A(32-34-36-39)
Size B(39-41-43-45)
Size C(45-47-49-51)

Bodice Size

Click on picture for enlarged view

Le Maitresse Couturiére

The Lady's Dressmaker

A clothing and pattern drafting guide for ladies garments, 1830-1900 written by Marna
Jean Davis for the Old West Reenactor. Lots of extras- a list of the authors favorite books, resources, period photos, sewing techniques, in addition to how-to drafting of basic patte rns throughout the mid to late 1800's.and drafting.
I tried to make this as complete as possible and it shows drafting of basic patterns for each period, hints on how to make a correct dress for the period, a list of modern to period fabric suggestions, patterns for undergarments, and how to adjust a basic pattern. I have included line drawings for each period showing common seam lines as a general quick guide, fashion plates from my own collection and a list of my favorite sewing toys. This is by no means the only book you will ever need if you are serious about your costuming- but it is a mighty fine place to start!
Bound in a 3-ring binder for ease of study
approximately 172 pp.

$65 plus postage

Parasol Pattern and Recovering Instructions

This pattern has several views for recovering the inexpensive small parasol frames that nearly every sutler offers. These are the same patterns I drafted for use when I constructed the Cold Mountain Parasols and the pattern makes a wonderful addition to the costumeclassroom.com Parasol class. It is NOT a required text, but for those who are timid about pattern drafting a very helpful item.
It also includes drafting instructions for recovering modern or period frames.
The price is $17.95

A new idea from Shooting Star- this book on CD was put together as a companion book
to the class on www.costumeclassroom.com, but is very useable as a stand alone book.
The information has been compiled into a PDF format that is readable with a free Adobe Acrobat download.
As a special bonus, a slide show presentation of the dresses in Marna Jean's working woman collection is included- over 200 photos! In addition, there is no deciphering technological gibberish just to open files,
because the CD automatically opens with an easy to use menu, shown below.

80 pages of hard to find information including period photos, quotations, illustrations and more!Covered are the working woman's home (wife and mother)and outside occupations(maids, nurses, businesswomen).
Where else can you find information on the dress of the pioneer woman or homesteader?
There are many extant "high fashion" gowns but many of those that were actually worn daily are long gone- get a glimpse of my special collection and of Victorian woman's version of casual/work wear.

Either the CD or the class can technically stand by itself
- what you don't get from the cd is the thought provoking questions/discussion of class-
but most of the basic text is the same-
I have added a few more things and re-arranged some stuff on the CD
so they aren't total duplicates of each other-
and you get alot more photos of my dresses with the CD-
not resized so you get more detail than I could do in class because of upload times.

Priced at $29.50

We now have several ways to pay