[.uk] Fashions of the Gilded Age, Volume 1: Undergarments, ... (ISBN 0963651757)

What An Excellent Book!!:
The pictures and descriptions within the book are an excellent reference if you are researching and intending on recreating one of these beautiful designs. Advanced knowledge of sewing skills is a must for those who wish to recreate these (definantly not for the novice sewer). Frances Grimble, you've done it again. Please keep them coming. I will buy every book you put out.

as good as all the other Frances Grimble books:
This book contains patterns for the following: corsets, hoopskirts and bustles (some) underclothing and negligee wear (quite a few) day and evening skirts (only about four) day bodices (quite a few) evening bodices (some) overskirts (some) polonaises (some) day dresses (quite a few) some = around ten quite a few = over 20 I would recommend this book for anyone who likes victorian costuming. It not only works as a pattern book, but as a source book, having lots of pictures you can use for reference. Even if you just look through it, it really can help you understand the styles of that era.

Fashions of the Gilded Age, Volume 1: Undergarments, Bodices, Skirts, Overskirts, Polonaises, and Day Dresses 1877-1882:
This book is wonderful. I believe I own every book Frances Grimble has written and anxiously await more. The variety of patterns is amazing and allows the experienced sewer to create their own designs from various components, like sleeves and collars. This sure beats trying to decipher the patterns in an original 1890's issue of Harpers!

Great for inspiration and making accurate patterns:
I am very pleased with this book and I think it gives a load of information for a very reasonable price. The book (together with vol.2) is overfilled with all kinds of garments you can imagine and for each sort of garment there are always many styles. It is not directly a drafting book, it does not tell you how to draft your own bodice etc. by using your measurements, but the method of using the patterns and the enlarging rulers is very close to that and, as I think, it might produce a very good substitution for a custom-drafted dress with saving a lot of your time and being very simple to do. It is something between custom drafting and pre-sized patterns, because you create the garments by using your bust and back length measurement, which are the two most important measurements for making a garment suited to your proportions and it will probably need only little easy modifications like adding/substracting from waist and hip width and maybe some changes for the front length. But all possible and most frequent modifications are very well explained in the book. It is all written in such a way that even with no or little knowledge of drafting, you'll be able to produce a probably very well fitted garments. For a drafting professional, it's a good help when doing things like skirts, especially draped overskirts and all garments creating a shape or silhouette that is hard to figure out. Even if you won't use the patterns for enlarging and draft the things yourself, you can very well keep to the shape of the patterns as you can see, unlike in so many pattern books, NUMBERS. I think this book has the best ratio of the price and the information given of all costume book I've come through. It's a pity that there are no such books for earlier periods:-(

Excellent book!!!:
This is a great book for seamstresses with some experience(I think it would be too hard for beginners.It would be good if you have some comprehenesion on sizing(drafting patterns yourself for example)but that isn't even necessary.I think it would be easier though:) Frances Grimble gives clear instructions for changing patterns to size and even to different body shapes(large bust, short back etc. You do need to take some time for this, but well, you'll have an authentic pattern in your hands, how great is that?;)And there are so many in this book! I was having a very hard time finding real historical patterns in The Netherlands(so far found one french journal from 1902)and I feel like a kid in a candystore now.:)I <3 this book already. You can make a complete outfit, from undergarments to overgarments. If you have some sewing experience and you love this period it is really a great book! Amazon's service is excellent too. It didn't take very long for the item to arrive(from US to the Netherlands)(with one step faster shipping, expidited?)it was even a lot faster then the estimated arrival time.