Hey everyone! Today we're going to be making our basic bodice block. To start off, we're going to draw a straight line measuring the length from the highest point on our shoulder straight down to our waist. From the top of that line we are going to square out using measurement from the pit of our neck to our shoulder tip. Then from the end of a that line we're going to square down three inches. Next, we're going to take the measurement from the pit of our neck to our waist, and we're going to measure up from the very first vertical line that we drew. From there, we're going to square out four
inches. Next we're going to measure from center front over over our apex to our side seam. If you're using a dress form that's
going to be about two inches below your arm plate. Using that measurement we're
going to square out from our first vertical line adding a quarter of an
inch for ease. From the end of that line, we're going to square up about 11 inches. Next we're going to measure from our shoulder tip to our center front waist and add one eighth of an inch. Using that measurement we're going to draw a straight line starting from our bottom right corner and rotating that line
until it touches our shorter three inch line at the top left corner. From the end of our diagonal line, we're going to draw a second line that's going to
measure the length of our shoulder, and we're going to rotate that until it touches our top horizontal line. From there, we're going to square down until it touches our other horizontal line directly below it. Starting from the top of our diagonal
line, we're going to measure down the distance from our shoulder tip to our apex. Then take your measurement from apex to apex and divide by two and add one
quarter of an inch. Using that measurement we're going to
square out from center front and go through the mark that we made on the
diagonal line. your measurements may or may not go past that diagonal line. Next we're going to measure from center front across our chest to our mid armhole and add a quarter of an inch. Half way between our top two horizontal lines we're going to use this measurement to square out from center front and then square up and down at the
end of that line. Next we're going to find our dart placement, which is usually about halfway between your center front and your side seam and directly below your bust point. Use this measurement to make a mark on
your center front waist. Then, square down three sixteenths of an inch. Next, we're going to take our strap measurement and this is going to be from our highest point on our shoulder to our side seams
plus three eighths of an inch. Using this measurement, we're going to draw a line starting at the intersection of our shoulder and neck line and rotating it
until it hits our far left vertical line. Next, we're going to take our side seam measurement, and we're going to draw a line that starts at the intersection of our last line
that we drew and the vertical line, and we're going to swing that out until the bottom of that line is one and one quarter inch away from that vertical line. Now connect the end of that line to our dart placement line that we drew earlier. Now, we're going to take our center front waist to side seam measurement, add one quarter of an inch, and subtract our dart placement measurement. Using this measurement
we're going to measure out from our dart placement line along our diagonal line
that's connecting to our side seam. Draw a straight line from your apex to your first dart placement point, and measure. This is going to be our first dart leg. To create our second dart leg we're going to take that measurement and we're going to draw a second line from our apex to our other point that we just created along
that waistline. Because our waist lines are curved, this new line will probably go past the diagonal line that we drew from our side seam to our dart placement point. Now since we don't want to sew a dart all the way up to our apex, we are going to find the center of these two dart leg points and we are going to draw a line from
that center point up to our apex and then along that point we're going to measure down from the apex on that line five eighths of an inch. This is going to be our new dart point. So you can go ahead and connect the lines from our two dart legs to that dart point and that is what we are going to be
sewing. Now to create our waistline, we're going to connect our side seam line to our new dart leg point and it's probably going to be curved since
our waist lines are curve and we're also going to connect our center front to our right dart leg. To make our neck line we're going to lower it by three-eighths of an inch and square out about a quarter of an inch along center front, and we're
going to use a French curve to connect our shoulder seam to this line making
sure that we bump it out towards the left one eighth of an inch. To draw our armhole we're going to do the same thing by making sure that our French curve does not go past our
vertical guideline that we created at our mid armhole, and then it's going to
connect from our shoulder tip to our side seam. Now, all that's left to do is add your seam allowance, your notches, true your seams, and true your dart.