Why do you even publish womenswear blocks? They are [insert strong opinion here].

This question comes up every now and then. The wording varies, but the sentiment can be summarized as why even publish this garbage, it doesn’t work at all.

Let me start by saying that you are not wrong. Both Breanna and Bella have serious shortcomings.

I myself (joost) am painfully aware of them, and I have toyed with the idea of retracting these patterns altogether.

But there’s a subset of people who get good results with them. I’ve seen several good looking makes based on Bella, and Breanna seems to be popular with people making doll clothes for some reason.

What I’m saying is, we’re not removing them because they work in some cases. Not in all cases though, which can be frustrating.

I don’t pretend to know how to draft for women. But I do get questions all the time about adding more womenswear to freesewing.org, and that starts with a well-designed block.

I have long waited for somebody to step forward to take this on themselves. Alas, I’ve been waiting in vain. Since the fastest way to get a question answered on the internet is to answer it yourself incorrectly, I set out to create these blocks.

So if you think you can do better, I hereby formally invite you to work together to design the womenswear block that you think/know to be the best one out there.

I gladly offer my services to code/implement your design/vision, so that the entire sewing community can benefit from it.

You can reach me at joost at freesewing.org, we also have an active community on Discord.

I hope to hear from you soon.

joost