The Other Me: Making a Dress Form
Project Specs:
Sizes: mine!
Materials: 80 ish feet of duct tape, some polyester pillow stuffing, all my long-suffering and never used spare fabric, my stash of plastic grocery bags, a plain t-shirt, and a sports bra.
The final product in all her glory.
My birthday present to myself in 2019 was a dress form. I'd gotten so tired trying to pleat things on the ground and hoping they hung right, guessing how stuff should line up, praying that my hems are even and the right length, and pinning layers of things together. And honestly, it was a really good call. It's really lived up to its intended purposes and done so reasonably well.
Except for one small detail- it's not the right size.
The shoulders are too big. Which means a) none of my garments fully close when on the form and b) that none of the waistlines really fit over it well. I've been able to work around that mostly, but when it came to my series of smocks, that turned out to really not work for me.
So, Evan, in all his generosity, agreed to help me make a duct tape custom form. We were at Michael's when t-shirts and duct tape just HAPPENED to be on sale so I picked up a shirt for $3 (embarrassingly, I had to resort to children's sizes and it was STILL too big), some polyfill, and about 60 yards of duct tape. Then we went home and I tacked on some fabric to add length so it could go down my hips, as well as a little bit to the neckline so I could have an actual neck.
Beginning stages of wrapping.
And then we began taping. It took all 60 yards of duct tape, and about an hour to do. Stuffing this thing took WAY more stuffing than I anticipated. I used all the polyfill I had just in the arms and neck, then moved on to the stash of fabric that I swore I'd find a use for but never have. Once that was exhausted, I finally cannibalized the teal dress, which I've been promising Evan I'd do for ages because he hates having to lace me up in it. And when that STILL wasn't enough, I stuffed it with shopping bags and old clothes I was supposed to be giving away. I inserted the pole from my previous dress form's stand so that I could just reuse the stand, and then it was (mostly) complete!
In the process of cutting me out, we accidentally cut most of the way through the strap of the sports bra I was wearing (in an attempt to make sure my garments are fairly supportive) which turned out to be a blessing in disguise. I am not the world's most well-endowed woman, but my breasts do exist and they got entirely lost on the form. Ultimately, we put the damaged sports bra on the form, padded it out with more polyfill to my actual measurements, and then taped over it in decorative duct tape. There was some weird groping involved but it got done and the form actually fits really well and as a bonus, now the form isn't a creepy in Caucasian skin tone.
The second major issue with it was I miscalculated where the pole in the last form went to adjust the height. I thought the pole was shorter than it is so we're going to have to cut it down. Thankfully my dad has a saw that can cut the pole down, so that's what we're doing.
