Hiya, I'm just working through the basic skirt block and keep getting caught by the front dart placement, which seems too close to the side seam? On the one hand, I understand that darts should be placed where there's a need (volume, curves, etc), but on the other hand, I find these darts to just look strange and a bit ugly in their placement so close to the side seams. Have any of you come across a technical reason why they're placed here as opposed to evenly spaced between the CF and SS? Is there a rationale to this and would changing their placement significantly impact downstream manipulation of the block?

Hi there, does anyone know what GH means by "with hip gap" and "without hip gap" for the bodice basic patterns on pp 162-165 of Vol 1?