Built By Wendy Book Review

I just received this book in the mail and I am so excited! It is not a typical sewing book. Built By Wendy, by Wendy Mullin, is written for anyone who wants to create dresses that are unique. Wendy gives you 3 style of dresses; the sheath dress, shift dress and dirndl dress. The pattern templates do not have seam allowances but that is so that you can create more designs with them. These pattern temples are called slopers. Designers use slopers to create new dress designs. Wendy also shows you how to create 25 different dresses but you will have to draft some of the extra pieces of the dress. When I think of the slopers, the lines are the seams. After reading through the book I realized that I have been creating these basic dress designs all a long. Here are just a few examples. You might have these sewing patterns too.
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The Shift Dress
Laurel by Colette Patterns

This is the shift dress with a couple darts along the back panels.

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The Dirndl Dress
Washi Dress by Made by Rae

3189 – Coffee Dress Sewing Pattern | BurdaStyle.com

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Sheath Dress

B5277 | Misses' Dress, Butterick Patterns

If you use the slopers to make your perfect fit dress in these three styles, then even if you buy another dress pattern you can check it with your sloper and adjust it for your size. Or use the sloper to make all of the dresses you can imagine. The trick to this book is putting in the work up front to get your sloper size correct. Making a muslin of all of the dresses and correcting the sloper sizes along the way. In the long run you might save more money and you can be inspired by something you see and recreate it on these 3 style dresses. 
Happy Sewing!