{"id":58807,"date":"2016-12-05T11:43:18","date_gmt":"2016-12-05T16:43:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/oliverands.com\/community\/?p=58807"},"modified":"2016-12-05T17:14:55","modified_gmt":"2016-12-05T22:14:55","slug":"bistro-dress-to-easy-shift-a-building-block-dress-tutorial","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/oliverands.com\/community\/blog\/2016\/12\/bistro-dress-to-easy-shift-a-building-block-dress-tutorial.html","title":{"rendered":"bistro dress to easy shift: a building block dress tutorial"},"content":{"rendered":"

Many of you have asked about the Building Block Dress book<\/a> and how it can be applied to other patterns, including women’s clothing. Here’s an example of how the book could inspire you to look at sewing patterns differently.<\/p>\n

It’s my hope that once you start to alter patterns like the book shows you how to do, you’ll start to look at clothing differently. Rather than focusing on the pattern envelope image, you’ll look at the “bones” of the designs. It doesn’t matter what the fabric on the cover of the pattern is; what’s important is that you look at the structure of the design itself and think about how you could you alter that design to make other styles.<\/p>\n

\"Bistro<\/a><\/p>\n

Here’s an example for you. For quite a while now I’ve had these two images saved in a Pinterest folder. Both dresses are really cute, and I thought it would be fun to make a similar style. I especially had my eye on the white Emerson Fry dress because I love the silhouette and the hip seam with pockets, and I had some perfect sateen from Robert Kaufman<\/a> that I wanted to use for my dress.<\/p>\n

\"inspiration\"<\/a><\/p>\n

So I decided to start with one of the patterns I’m most proud of developing, our Liesl + Co Bistro Dress<\/a>. It doesn’t look much like the photos above, does it?<\/p>\n

\"Liesl<\/a><\/p>\n

This is a classic sheath dress pattern, and I’m especially proud of this pattern because I spent a lot of time getting the structure and details just right. It’s one of my block patterns, and I’m especially happy with the armhole and sleeve, which turned out beautifully. I knew this pattern would be a great place to begin, even though it looks nothing like the inspirational images. So here’s how I did it:<\/p>\n

1.<\/strong> I started with the front and back dress pieces. Right away I made a muslin (details on page 7-11 of the Building Block Dress book), eliminating the waist darts on both pieces to get a looser fit through the waist in order to get closer to the inspiration photo.<\/p>\n

\"fig-1aa\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Then I used the muslin to determine where I wanted to make changes to the basic pattern. Here are the changes:<\/p>\n