You need to get yourself to Castle Howard. They had a bunch of Elizabethan gowns there for some reason (I'm still not sure, except that they looked nice), and they had two or three HUGE EFFING WORKBOOKS with all their resources, progress, patterns, and what-not. You couldn't get a perfect view from the back for some of them, sadly, but it was neat to look at and think about what you would do differently ("Omg, why did she choose that fabric? That's not period at all! And that hat's a bit iffy..."). It was really quite inspiring.