Drafting the Dress Block

The Extended Line Dress (ELD) block is used to make dresses without a waist seam. Image 1 shows what the ELD block looks like. You don’t need to make the ELD block from scratch – you can make it either:

• Using your Bodice Blocks and Skirts Blocks; joining them together, and making adjustments to the waist darts
• Using a Torso block.  A Torso block finishes just before the hips, so it’s just a case of extending the Torso down to the required (preferred) length for the dress.*

*Note: The ELD block is just an extension of the Torso Block, or alternately, the Torso block is a shortened version of the ELD block.  If you make the ELD block from the Bodice & Skirt Blocks, you can then make the Torso Block from the ELD Block. I will be creating the ELD block from the Bodice & Skirt Blocks.

Darts

This dress block has a bodice side seam dart and two waist darts that run through the bodice and skirt. When making the ELD block from the Bodice & Skirt blocks, it doesn’t matter if the darts on the Bodice & Skirt don’t match up, these can just be redrawn.

Example

An example of a dress made with the ELD block is the princess-line dress shown to the right in Image 2.  The dress on the left has a waist seam; it is made using the Bodice and Skirt Blocks.   The dress on the right is made using the ELD dress block; there is no waist seam, the side-seam and waist darts are incorporated into the design line.