How to make the Skirt Block and adding the Ease

Welcome to a new class of industrial pattern making, in today’s class we are going to make your first block pattern. The Skirt.

What is a block pattern?

Many professionals will say a block pattern is a basic pattern that sits very tight to the body (with zero ease or allowances) like a second skin.

To me (and many other professionals) a block pattern is the pattern that we can use over and over again (because we know it works and saves us time). The difference being that these pattern blocks have movement ease.

The ease or allowance is the extra space that we give to a pattern, it can be movement ease or design ease.

The movement eases are the extra centimetres given to the pattern so that customer can move freely.

The amount of movement ease you give will depend on the type of customer the garment is being made for (typically garments for older customers will have more movement ease than for younger).

For this skirt block class, I am not going to add any ease because I tend to like skirts with zero ease. In the class I will explain where you can give extra ease.

The Extra Materials section of the class will tell you how many extra centimetres to allow for more ease and gives you the industrial measurements of a women’s size 8 (UK).

Class

Extra material

Now we have our skirt block pattern, we have to make the toile (prototype) with calico and see if we have to modify the pattern. This is when you different amounts of ease to get the fit you want.

What did you think of today’s class? The skirt block is one of the first patterns that I learned and I think it is the best to start with.

Exercices

As you already know, the best way to learn is to practice.

For this class, I suggest you make your skirt block with the measurements that I have given you.

I ask that you make it with my measurements so that you can use that same pattern to perform all the transformations that I am going to teach you.

Then you can do it with your own measurements.

You can do it full-size or half-scale, please remember to tell me in the “Do you want to tell me something?”

If you want me to review the exercise, I will need you to use my measurements and send me a minimum of 2 photos of the process and 2 photos of the final result.