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building block dresses sewn by frances suzanne
We’re absolutely thrilled to have Ashley and Emily from Frances Suzanne back on the blog again. They’ve visited before to share their top picks among sewing patterns—like the Puppet Show and Music Class designs—and even talked about their experiences with tucks and sewing outfits for a Disney trip. This time around, they’re here to showcase the Building Block Dresses they’ve crafted for their nieces. Let’s dive right in!
Hello everyone! It’s such a pleasure to connect with the Oliver + S community once more. As summer rolls around, our sewing goals tend to grow ambitious, with dreams of creating more pieces during the break. Naturally, the Building Block Dresses quickly became part of our plans. We must admit—we’ve turned into somewhat particular sewists. While we adore many patterns, we inevitably find ourselves tweaking something minor in each project if we were to follow the original instructions exactly.
Lucky for us, Liesl’s *Building Block Dress: A Sewing Pattern Alteration Guide* has been an invaluable resource. It helps us bring our creative visions to life with precision, speed, and a far higher success rate than if we were relying solely on our instincts. With its guidance, we’ve completed six unique Building Block Dresses so far, each distinct in style or fabric choice. It’s hard to tell that the same base pattern was used for all of them!
For our eldest niece, EA, we’ve already sewn three dresses:
1. A relaxed, empire-waist dress featuring a Peter Pan collar and notched short sleeves.
2. A regal princess-seamed navy dress with capped sleeves, a tie collar, a pleated circle skirt, and playful pockets.
(This post might just offer the most thorough review of the book.)
3. An heirloom-worthy Easter dress adorned with lace from head to toe. We also created a matching slip using the Building Block Dress pattern as inspiration.
Next up is CL, the middle niece, who has received three dresses as well:
1. A sleeveless dress in stripes, featuring a pleated circle skirt and upholstered fabric.
2. Another princess-seamed dress, this time in florals, with capped sleeves, a sculpted collar, a pleated circle skirt, and pockets to boot.
Interestingly, this dress uses all the same drafted pieces as EA’s navy dress, except for the collar. After scouring Instagram and Flickr for Building Block Dress examples, we realized no one else seemed to have made the shaped collar variation (featured as "dress variation F" on page 111 of the book). Clearly, this couldn’t stand. So, we took matters into our own hands and designed our very own version. Spoiler alert: someone out there may have already done this, but we didn’t find any examples in our search.
3. A sleeveless knit nightgown, inspired by the slip we made for EA’s heirloom dress.
Shelley’s post on adapting the Building Block Dress for knits was incredibly helpful during this process.
We’re overjoyed to have gained the confidence to tweak specific details while altering patterns. This newfound flexibility allows us to take any pattern and transform it into something entirely new using Liesl’s methods. Once you draft certain elements in a size range, those pieces can be reused across multiple garments!
Take, for instance, EA and CL’s dresses [here](#) and [here](#). Same pattern pieces, same size, but different collars and fabrics. Talk about versatility!
And then there’s LG, our youngest niece, who hasn’t yet received a Building Block Dress. But don’t worry—her moment is coming soon. Several pattern pieces have already been drafted in sizes 4 and 5, and trust me, we won’t hesitate to put them to good use when the time comes. At that point, the real fun begins—the sewing!
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