Handstitched History

I’ve chosen to work from home today because it is so sunny and beautiful outside. Sitting by a window on a low stool, legs crossed, with a half-stitched jacket sleeve on my knee, I take a sip of my beverage. My thimble is still on my finger as I taste the rich flavor of the coffee. The slight tug of my tape measure around my neck reminds me that I’m “at work” even though I’m at home.

Bright sunlight streams through the window onto my lap where my work waits for me to finish the coffee-pause. There is no music playing. There is no television turned on for background noise. There is nothing but the sound of the breeze rustling the leaves in the courtyard outside my New York City apartment and my needle quietly tapping against my thimble as I stitch. In this moment, there is nothing but the work and my own thoughts.

I became a tailor because I love to work with my hands. I love the feeling of bringing a flat, boring piece of fabric to life with a good pattern and quality stitching. The only thing I love more than making a garment is sending one off to be worn and loved by a client. In my youth, I trained in a suit shop, and for my birthday one year, I was given a book of patterns by a Spanish tailor named Juan de Alcega. It was originally published in 1580 and then again in 1589. I was immediately taken by the cuts of the clothing and the odd notations on the diagrams.

The author in a handstitched suit based on seventeenth-century fashion and a handknitted hat based on a 1549 extant example. Photo courtesy of Mathew Gnagy

The Spanish Manuals

At the time, I couldn’t read modern Spanish very well, let alone a dialect that was more than four hundred years old. The reprint that I had been given had translations, but there was a lot of nuance missing—nuance that was key to understanding the encoded information. I later came to know five different Spanish manuals that had been printed by the early modern Spanish government. They span the decades between 1580 and 1720. Four of these manuals provide a relatively unbroken understanding of the cut of clothing from 1580 to 1640.

The manuals were published about 10 to 20 years apart and show the progression of tailored clothing through proportion and shape as well as textiles. The system of measuring and pattern drafting that these books use, when wielded by a trained person, is astonishingly accurate. Since that first manual was placed in my hands, I have made it my mission to learn, decipher, translate, and re-create the clothing of the early modern era from the books.

These books were commissioned by the government as a way of documenting the cuts of Spanish clothing at the time, but more than that, they served to inform people how much cloth they were allowed to buy and use for any given garment. Fabric was so expensive in comparison to typical annual wages that the government needed to regulate how much a tailor was allowed to use for certain kinds of clothing and which fabrics should be used for specific social classes. I am certain that these books were invaluable at the time for everyone involved in the clothing trades. The brilliance of what they have left behind for us to discover between their pages is simply stunning.

Cutting illustration from a 1589 edition of Juan de Alcega’s Libro de geometría, práctica y traça (41.7). Courtesy of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

The Pattern System and More

The pattern-making system is one that uses proportion to scale and adjust the cuts of the clothing to an individual’s measurements. I call it the “Bara System.” In the manuals themselves, it is simply called “the bara of measure.” Using scaled rulers or tape measures, the tailor could easily draft any pattern to any size needed, while memorizing only the proportions for the shape. During a time when paper was still an expensive item and large sheets of it were hard to find, a trained tailor would simply mark directly on the cloth and cut. There was no need to keep a separate pattern as the accuracy of the system made it unnecessary. I have learned and implemented this system for more than a decade in my work, and it still surprises me with its versatility and accuracy. Each of the tailors’ cutting manuals has its own character, but for me, one stands out far above the rest: Geometria y traça para el oficio de los sastres by Diego de Freyle, 1588, Sevilla. This book is housed in the Folger Library in Washington, DC, and is a trove of information about so much more than just the shape of clothing patterns.

In Freyle’s manual, there is much information about running a tailor shop that is given in the pages before the diagrams. His casual style of prose leads me to believe that he may have been illiterate and was dictating to someone who wrote down his words. So personal is the voice he uses, that I can almost picture him pacing the room as the scribe wrote down what he said. He tells us, “For a master tailor of this trade to be wanted and frequented by the patrons he has, and respected by the young men who might work in his shop, he must demonstrate somberness and moderation in his person. Not so much that he drives away said youths, nor so little that they would have nothing to do with him. Being well-mannered, he should not mock them lest they make fun of him in secret, or much worse, in public.”

This advice is as relevant today as it was 433 years ago. Be a leader, be balanced and calm, be firm, don’t be a jerk. This passage alone makes me feel instantly connected to Freyle himself as I have always struggled with professional distance, and more than once, it has cost me my job. Clearly, other professionals of the era struggled as well, or he would not have felt the need to mention it in his book.

If we follow the logic that there must have been enough of a widespread issue with professionalism for Freyle to feel the need to mention it, then a later passage in the same chapter sparks even more curiosity: “. . . and because of this, it is important that the worker has an eye to do well what the Master has told him within the purview of his job without doing it over. In this way, he will stay in good standing with the Master. The Master will give pay enough for the clothes that the young man makes and pay him calmly and without shouting. In so doing he will remain in good standing with his employee.”

When I first read this passage, I had to go back and make sure that I had translated it correctly. Sure enough, I was spot on. Digest that for a moment. Yelling at an employee on payday was common enough that he had to mention it! Yes, I most certainly can connect with this tailor’s humanity. It is also possible that there was not a widespread issue with yelling or keeping professional distance, but that Freyle was writing such words in self-reflection to make sure that future tailors reading his book might avoid his mistakes.

He has some advice for the young worker as well. Immediately following his description of the correct operation of the handsewing needle, he tells us, “. . . you must speak little and be quiet, for there are many tradesmen who, all the day long engage in chit-chat or tell tales without having a care for their seams. To those who have to pay them with their over-talking, they [the chatty stitchers] had better be advantageous in their sewing.” Even then, 433 years ago, bosses needed to discourage casual chatting among employees. Conversation was frowned upon and the expectation was that they should work quietly.

I was trained, in my youth, to work with music playing. Soft music—classical, usually—would fill the dead air around me and my coworkers as we worked in whatever shop had hired us for the summer. We weren’t supposed to chat, but we did anyway, and our work suffered because of it. Upon reading this passage in Freyle’s manual, I made a mental note to try working in silence. A few weeks later, I gave it a try. To this day, I still do.

Mathew’s handstitched buttonholes. Photo courtesy of Mathew Gnagy

Looking Back, Moving Forward

In a world of fast-paced living, ever-changing digital landscapes, and seemingly less and less time to connect with oneself and each other, we have to fight harder than ever to make sure we keep these techniques, methods, and processes alive. I write books and teach others so that they can pass on the knowledge to the students they will inevitably have. We need to do it, not just because the information shouldn’t die, but because more than ever, we need to hold on tight to things that help us turn inward and find peace. We need skills that require connection to each other to master. We need to find a way forward with fashion that doesn’t destroy lives and damage the planet. Falling back to a longer view of clothing and clothing construction might just give us a way forward.

And just like that, I am full circle, back to my cup of coffee, the breeze through the trees, and the sunlight illuminating the work in my lap. While making garments from Freyle’s book, I imagine my fingers follow the same paths as his, the same rhythms as his workers. The shapes of clothing that he created nearly half a millennium ago now hang in my closet and on the backs of my clients. From his hands to mine, knowledge was passed. Every day that I go to work, I thank Freyle and the other authors for their contributions to the trade of tailoring, to my life, and to the lives of those to whom I pass on this legacy. To you, the reader, I invite you to step away from the machines, the distractions, the constant need for speed and let your needle softly slide through your fabrics, shutting out the static of the modern world a little more with each stitch. Let the process bring you home to yourself and the necessary beauty of objects made by hand.

To Diego de Freyle, I say, “No se preocupe, Señor. I’ll keep your memory vibrant and alive.”

Mathew Gnagy has a business and book series called The Modern Maker. He specializes in historical hand techniques for sewing, knitting, and needle lace. His websites are themodernmaker.co and themodernmaker.net. You can watch his videos on YouTube at The Modern Maker or follow him on Instagram @mgnagydesign and Facebook: The Modern Maker. His books are available through Amazon sites worldwide.

The Modern Maker Vol. 3: Hand Sewing Stitches for Garment Construction By Mathew Gnagy New York: The Modern Maker, 2020. ISBN 9781659012613