Armed with my French Curve, my pencil, eraser, rulers, tape measure, roll of printed pattern paper, iPhone calculator app, and all 20 pages of instructions printed off the BurdaStyle.com website, I headed into Trish’s class, ready to get to work. I managed to get through the first 29 of 32 steps of the construction process in class, mostly working on my own, but with Trish there to start me off, guide me through, make sense of the sometimes strange and not-always-so-wonderful instructional language, and definitely lots of that very important moral support. I got home and completed the last step, ie. drawing the waist darts.
As a review on the Burda instructions, I must say that, apart from the fact that Burda has decimated the poor old inch, and includes measurements like 4/5? and 1/10?, it was really quite a straightforward process, one that is easily completed in a couple three hours. Any strangeness of language is more, I think, a matter of depth of understanding, rather than any shortcoming on the part of the instruction’s author. So, if you’re contemplating making your own basic bodice block, I can recommend this process quite happily. Use a pencil though, and have a good eraser on hand.
The last step is to redraw the block, and cut it out. However, I’m waiting to extend the block down to hip level, which Trish will help me with next week, as this part is omitted from Burda’s block.
More to come.