Book Review: Absolutely A-Line

Absolutely A-Line: 1 Easy Pattern 26 Adorable Dresses for Girls

by Wendi Gratz

★ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

I always feel really bad giving a craft book a lousy review, because someone put their heart, soul and passion into it.  But, this book was not good at all. 

The premise of this book is an excellent one. One basic pattern with many many variations. The problem was undoubtedly the execution.

- The finished dresses were not very well sewn. In particular, the "Bling It On" dress featured on page 78-81 was very ill fitting, with the blinged collar sitting well above the model's shoulders.

- The arm holes in the master pattern are extremely large, gaping even. In every single picture from this book you can tell the arm holes are cut much much too deep, falling at least 3-4 inches below the arm pit.

- Many of the variations are just plain unattractive. The "Over the Top" dress with giraffe applique was just plain awful. I would never put my children in the dress.

Overall, a great concept, but a poor finished product.  And, honestly, with the amount of FREE sewing tutorials on craft blogs you should be able to easily make a simple A-line dress by tracing an existing dress and add variations much more attractive than these. 

Here are a few tutorials:
Lined A-line Dress
Reversible A-line Dress (using pattern)
Un-lined A-line Pocket Dress

Have you read this book?  If so, what did you think?

[ emilie ]