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I wish I'd seen this earlier, it's very relevant to my interests! I published a book of early 19th century patterns last year, and have taken a ton on my own time.

The way I do it and the way Janet Arnold did it (as per one of my professors, who knew her) involves measuring from point to point on each piece in a garment. Seamlines on the grain are very easily plotted; for slants and curves, you use a right-angled ruler and measure over and up the same way you find the slope of a line on a graph.

This method does require a certain amount of garment handling, especially for areas that aren't straightforwardly on the front or the back (eg shoulder seams, sleeves), but it's possible to be gentle during this if you know what you're about and can get it done fairly quickly.

My MA program (Fashion and Textile History, Theory, and Museum Practice at FIT in New York) did not teach us how to do this, but because we did have to sketch extant garments I was able to take that as an opportunity to teach myself. If you practice scaling up, that's very helpful, because you just do the same thing in reverse. You also develop an eye for mentally deconstructing confusing techniques and get very familiar with the shapes that come up all the time.

Most of the information you'll find about historical fashions online are meant to help to recreate the garments. The most popular periods to recreate tend to be those that are tied to re-enactment groups. For the 1650s, you won't find much; however, just a decade earlier was the English Civil War for which there are a lot of re-enactment groups like this one. Since it's only a decade off, members of the group may have some stuff online that may help you. Here is a good blog to get you started.

In the meantime; here are some books that will help:

17th C Women's Dress Patterns: part 1

17th C Women's Dress Patterns: part 2

17th & 18th C Fashion in Detail

Glasgow Museums 17th C Costume

Just to get started. I personally own pretty much all of these. You notice a fashion shift in the 17th C starting around the mid 1620s and continuing well until 1680s. That isn't to say you could wear the same style garment throughout that time period - just that what is worn from that point couldn't be mistaken for the century before or after. Similar to in the 20th C, no one would blink about a just below the knee skirt from the 1920s on.

Mid 60s, kids clothes are kids clothes. I'd recommend watching stuff FROM the period, rather than a modern interpretation of it. A lot of the costumes in The Help are pretty good, but nothing beats going to the source. For getting a feel for 20th century stuff, I always like starting with Olian's "Everyday fashions of the (decade) as pictured in the Sears Catalog" Amazon has it, but check your local library!

It's literally just called a man's shirt. It was the basic undergarment worn by men for a long time. You can find some good patterns on this site that fit the period of the movie: http://www.wmboothdraper.com/

and this book is a great source for period shirts: Cut my Cote by Dorothy Burnham. It includes cutting diagrams and history.