Ah, Italy, home of all things wonderful. That and France. Anything from Italy and France is automatically better. Yes? No? Whatever, you don’t want to look this gift horse in the mouth.
Amended 2/28/11: It seems this book has been removed from the archives site. As I mentioned below, I thought that might happen.
On the Library of Congress download site, there is a modern Italian pattern drafting book with text in English (and Italian naturally) available for download. Since this book is relatively new (copyright 2004), I can only imagine its inclusion is some sort of gross error on someone’s part. Or maybe not? The school that publishes the book provides it to their students at no charge (then again, they charge 1,000 euros for a grading course). I can’t say whether this book will remain on the LOC site so I suggest getting it now.
The title is Il Modellismo Sartoriale. It contains drafts for women, men and children. It is 326 pages. I wish I could tell you more but I’ve only scanned through page 31 and have yet to find a table of contents.
Once you click through, you have various download options. Whichever one (presuming pdf) you choose, it’s a huge download. Take it from me and don’t get the smaller one (35MB) because the display is a bit wonky. It quasi-sort-of displays two pages as one image but the second page is cut off and does not repeat on the subsequent page. For optimal learning, I recommend going whole hog and getting the color pdf (50MB+) because some of the drafts use a second color to superimpose pattern pieces one upon the other. If you’re experienced already and can read drafts readily, get the B/W pdf and save some space.
I haven’t looked through much of it but I am hoping it has a grading section which I will examine closely. Italians grade differently than we do in the US. Many firms still do it in the manner I mentioned in Monday’s post.
Happy downloading!
Thanks!! Excited to look through it.
Thanks Kathleen!
Wow – it has such gorgeous illustrations, too. What a terrific resource.
Happy New Year Kathleen!
Thanks for all your postings and sharing this PDF download with us.
Greetings,
Ana
Hi Kathleen
I have been to the LOC website but cannot find the section to download the book. Would you post the link please?
Kim
OK, ignore that request. I actually followed the link on your page that I had totally missed. Sorry about that.
Kim
Downloading even as I type … I’m looking forward to further comments and reviews.
Thanks for these links Kathleen, I lost hours last night downloading books!, it’s a great resource:)
Looks like I finally found my excuse to buy a Kindle.
Thank you ขอบคุณครับ
Good find! Thanks Kathleen
Oh my goodness! that site is incredible, I like this one…
http://www.archive.org/details/manualofworkgarm00unio
Merci beaucoup pour cette découverte, c’est un beau cadeau.
Happy New Year
No fair scooping me on my own blog! That was my next post! Naughty Deanna! :)
Thanks Kathleen! This is a great find. And the illustrations, beautiful and very clear …..but also a real scream in their voluptuousness. So italiano.
This is fun! Need to take some days of for studying now!
Happy New Great and enjoyable Year everyone!
Sorry! Great minds think alike, fools thoughts seldom differ.
Merci Kathleen!!!!
That’s a great way to start the New Year
Happy New Year to you
Thankyou so much, can never have enough drafting books, I am still wanting the drafting for knits book.
Thanks Kathleen! That’s a fun one for flat pattern. But please you guys, don’t follow it for a mens’ jean pattern!
Thanks for letting us know!
Happy New Year Kathleen and thanks for sharing.
Hooray! It’s so rare to find a drafting book with men’s blocks. Pity the instructions are just a bit … odd. I’m particularly amused by the places where you’re told to mark something x cm and there’s a parenthesis to say (not a fixed measurement). But no explanation of what is not fixed about it or how you would figure the measurement if it’s not fixed. I guess that since it’s the text for a course, they didn’t feel they needed to include all the little details.
Hello Kathleen,
What size of paper is the original book? I am wondering that since the measurements are scaled and if I print them in a different format it will be all off.
Best regards,
Ana
Thanks Kathleen! I had no idea the LOC had downloads.
Happy new year Kathleen!! Thank you for the post, I can never have too many drafting books. Wishing you the best in this new year!
Thank you so much Kathleen!
Ana, I don’t have the original book so I wouldn’t know. It doesn’t matter so long as you can read the text to discern the needed measures to input for each draft.
I don’t know about the women or bambino parts (except that drawings are hilarious), but I wouldn’t trust the men part. The jackets are very strange, the trousers not that good, and the tailcoats are just humorous. At least, if some patternmakers use instructions like these, I now understand many things we see in ready-to-wear.
It does give so good ideas of style manipulation for people who already have some good basic blocs, though. So it’s still a good book to have in the library. Plus, when bored, a good laugh is always welcome.
@Paul Grassart: Why do you say that the mens sections are off? I am not a terribly skilled patternmaker, so if you could tell me what is wrong I would greatly appreciate it.
@Donna: Unless the Kindle can scale .pdf files, I wouldn’t ruch out to buy a Kindle just for patternmaking books. The problem with .pdf files is that they aren’t usually optimized for the small screen available on e-readers; unless the reader allows you to zoom, you won’t be able to read small notations in technical drawings, and books larger than fiction-sized paperbacks ends up being ridiculously small. I *think* that the Apple iPad would work, but I have not the money to buy one and test it, nor do I know people that own one.
When “Il Modellismo Sartoriale” is talking about ease allowance by degrees (page 8), what does this mean? For instance, I see that for the bust, the allowances for 0° degrees [isn’t 0° degrees redundant?], 1° degrees, 2° degrees, 3° degrees, and 4° degrees are (-8 – 0), (0 – 8), (6 – 12), (10 – 16) and (10 – 18). It sounds like they are saying that for a 1° degree fit at the bust you can have between 0cm and 8cm (0″- 3 5/32″) over the nominal bust size, so a garment drafted for a bust measurement of 86.4cm (34″) with 1° degree of ease allowance could be between 86.4 (34″) and 94.4cm (37 3/16″) in the bust? Or did they switch from centimeters in the ‘standard body measurements’ chart to millimeters in the ‘ease allowance’ chart?
Why are they labeling it as X° degrees? Is this to indicate the looseness of fit, from ‘German fetish rubber’ (0°) to ‘Omar the Tent-maker’ (4°)?
Or am I completely wrong on all fronts?
Seth, I don’t no if I should thank you or not. Every time I think I have found a reason to buy a kindle I find a reason not to buy. Oh, well.
There was a question about page size. Likely it is A4 which means it will scale smaller if printed on Letter sized paper. Try different sized paper options for pdf printing to see what size will scale to 100% (or no scaling of page size).
You can get to the school in the link above and maybe you could post a question there as to what they writer means about degrees. It may have something to do with the way garments are sized in Europe; just a guess.
I’ve been trying to download the pdf, but it opens in a new window instead of downloading. I can download something by right clicking it and saving. But, when I try to open it, I get a message that it isn’t a pdf or is currupted. Am I missing something?
It did download as a epub.
Clara
It depends upon how your Operating System is set up. It seems that yours is set to open a new window, but not download to that window – rather, your programming then tries to save to a file location on your computer. The “save as” option should be pdf . If you are getting a different format, search online to find a program to open the file. When I save something and do not have a known program to open the file I get a small window that allows me to choose a file to open on my computer or search online for an appropriate program. What operating system are you using?
– do you have Adobe Reader installed on your computer? If not, you can get it free. That can also contribute to not downloading as a pdf.
This seems to be a good source.
http://www.davidtan.org/how-to-open-and-read-epub-ebooks/
Download and install (if it doesn’t install automatically)Adobe Digital Editions.
Dear Kathleen,
Thank you very much for sharing one of the wonderful resources :)
You made my day!!!
Take care
I’ve been looking everywhere for this book, but I can’t seem to download it from the site. Can someone help me, please!?!?!
As I said in this entry:
It would appear the book has now been removed from the archives site. I’ll update this entry to mention as much.
Note: If the copyright owner is enforcing their rights, I can’t facilitate any offers to help someone who wants a copy after the fact. I regret if anyone is disappointed but that is the law.
Can anyone recommend a good pattern drafting book besides Helen Armstrong Jones – a current one not a vintage one, one where one can draft patterns for garments that can actually be reproduced in a factory ;) … Thanks.
I saw the other entry on free pattern drafting resources – I don’t think this was included
http://www.vintagesewing.info/1940s.html
Seems the cat’s out of the bag in regards to (now illegal?) downloads.
Just a quick note for people reading this in the blog archives, re: Seth’s question about degrees in the comments above. I have lived there and can speak and read Italian well. They don’t use punctuation quite the same as we do (e.g. a comma instead of a decimal point/period).
This might make the usage in the book clearer, in Italy ‘December 1st’ would be written as ‘1° Dicembre’. The degree symbol is used instead of ‘st’, ‘nd’, ‘rd’ and ‘th’ in written Italian.