All Ass, 1 Block

Greetings and Salutations, fellow stitchers! Today I tell a tale unparelled heights, of obsession, character arcs, confusion and mystery. No, I'm not talking "Tiger King", but my toe-dip into creating my own blocks to fit my tush, my behind, my padding, my booty, my jelly.

This blog was brought to you today by one of my Sponsors: Dave (My father-in-law "hi Dave!" *Wave* - he reads this blog, because he is a legend who wants to always support me) who kindly purchased me the below book by Ann Ladbury.

Now in trying to find an image of Ann, I discovered that she passed away at the age of 88 years old, on 02nd June 2020. Yes, just a few weeks ago and her passing was widely unknown by our community. She truly was one of our communities finest assets and she had a television series in the 80's. She had a beautiful soft voice, and was normally clad in cashmere and tweed, her hair a fluffy angel cloud of peroxided blonde. She is often written about as the Delia Smith of sewing and the body of books and knowledge she left behind has enriched us so much and inspired so confidence for so many beginners. So, before I start to write about my adventure in following this book (and, although I would love to have unbridled praise, I do have criticisms) I just wanted to pause to demonstrate respect to the writer who did the actual work, leaving me the task of being able to assess/criticise it.

First, praise for this book. Well, unlike the vast majority of pattern making books, this book actually guides you through the block making process. I read the chapters a couple of times and the language was pretty ok and there is consciousness that it wanted to make you feel as welcome as possible, irrespective of your sewing experience. This, I discovered, was a false sense of security but we will get on to that later. Most books either provide blocks which are very, very small for you to trace and manipulate or send you off to go and find our own (I have other books by Ann which does just that by the way). The trouble is my ass is too big for those blocks and slopers for my ass apparently do not exist. This leaves me in an ever ending circle of "How the F*** do I even start". So, thank goodness I was given a book that gave me the skills to do just that.

So I want to draft my own and save a heck load of time and aggravation. Some may suggest that I use simple patterns pieces but part of the reason I am doing this is lack of patterns, or poorly drafted blocks, designed for teeny tiny bird figures, badly adapted for the plus sized sewists. I would love to have my dimensions sorted for a true couture fit and concentrate on the manipulations with a few tweaks for fit.

So my first criticism is that as soon as you try and start drafting a block, you aren't too sure what it is you are drafting. You know you are drafting a skirt but I did not know whether the pieces were going to be on the fold, whether seam allowance would be included, how much ease I would be given, if ease was going to be given. It would have taken a couple of sentences to enable me to know what I was actually creating. The book gives you a guideline drawing of the overall block for reference but the majority of the instructions are on the back of that page, so lots of flicking the pages back and forth constantly, which was most irritating. The diagram is very helpful and as you go through the drafting it has points of reference, A, B, C, D but, unfortunately, 1 it does not instruct you to label these points so half way through I realised and went back and did that, there is an inconsistency of using these reference points in the instructions. At one point Im drafting my darts and it references to point G and instructs me from that point to measure and mark. Trouble is that it does not make it clear as you could measure to the left or upwards. The other criticism I have is the language, references particularly to larger bodies having"problem" areas. I felt judged.

So before I reveal my resulting block a quick explanation of how the block is formed. When you are drafting the block, you are creating, simultaneously, the front and back pieces and the skirt here is a 4 panel skirt, so both panels represent a 1/4 of your body size. I was in conversation to a fellow plus sized instagram lady who actually recommends that plus sized draft the blocks are not done at the same time so I will explore that at a different time

I made a few mistakes because, despite the friendly tone, the instructions are purely technical and it assumes knowledge that I do not actually have. However, after a couple of hours, a few silent screams and a glass of fortifying

cider I did figure the instructions out to give me this......

Check out that curtain fabric...isnt it just so sexy. LOL. But the fit was pretty damn good I think. Very comfortable, but not exactly great looking skirt shape. The book heavily hinted that plus sizes do further amendments to the block to make it a A line skirt, which I did and this is the final result of that recommendation. So I think Im good for the block, I just need to manipulate it into a cute shape for me. I have a contender inspiration image

I think that I would need to adapt the block to account for negative ease, as the fabric I would use would be a ponte roma, I would adapt the skirt to make it longer and reduce the flare at the bottom of the skirt, adding a godet or kick pleat so I do not loose ease of movement. However, thanks to Ann Ladbury, I have a good start, despite some flaws and criticisms. So "Bon Voyage, Ann", I look forward to your gentle hand guiding my through the other blocks in the book.