From _The New-Way Course in Fashionable Clothes-Making_,
1926:


Lesson 24: The Dress Form

You are now going to learn something that has never been taught
in any dressmaking course before. You are going to learn how to fit
your own figure, without any outside aid whatever, without a dress
form or a model lining. An ordinary shirt, a little gummed paper, and
a little work and time—and you have before you a duplicate of your
own figure with every little line and curve just exactly where it ought
to be!

I found it at:
http://www.vintagesewing.info/1920s/26-FCM/FCM-24.htm


Joy Beeson
--
http://home.earthlink.net/~joybeeson/
joy beeson at earthlink dot net