The Dress Form 2/19/13

Sarah, with the help of her maid of honor, Courtney, made a dress form from paper packing tape. There are bunches of sites and videos on the web that provide detailed directions to make a custom dress form, saving you from the expense and trouble of buying a form and adjust it to your precise dimensions. Sarah actually has a regular one of her own (she shipped the form she made to me in the box her "real" dress form came in.) Every site I saw uses duct tape to for the custom form. I'm not sure why they chose the paper tape, but it works.

The form in the form box. 4 lbs vs. ?

It did maintain the shape well during shipping. Not sure duct tape would have, especially if it ended up in a warm place. I had to stuff it and used a variety of towels, bed linens and plastic grocery bags. The challenge was to create a stand for it. I thought about hanging it, but pictured the whole thing coming down from the ceiling with the almost completed gown on it.

Ikea Kroby lampstand

 

For the stand, at first I thought I would use the base of an Ikea floor lamp. But that turned out to be not enough of a base with the stuffed form on it--it wanted to fall over backwards.

During stuffing...

I had kept the heavy cardboard tube left over from the purchase of yards of blackout drapery lining years ago. One of those things you look at and think, "I know this will come in handy one day." Well, this is one thing that actually did. Hubby sawed a few inches off. I replaced the lamp base with that of a small patio table. The tube fits snuggly over a screw holder thingy. Nice.


I inserted some stuffing in the shoulders then inserted the tube and padded around it to hold it straight and in place. The bust needed special attention. I taped bubble wrap on the bottom to discourage gravity from letting the stuffing fall. So far so good.

Looks a little cockeyed, but I can deal.

The table base works well.

 These sequins arrived today from Cartwright Sequins. The amounts seemed huge, but looking at the tiny packages...I don't know. Sequins are really, really cheap!

 This is our growing bead selection, including seed beads, glass pearls, bugles and rocailles gather from JoAnn.com and Michaels. We also have some Swarovski crystals that I will put on here at some point.

 Beads from JoAnn

Practice.












My next steps: Make the muslin mock-up for the bodice. This might include two layers: a lining and an outer layer. We're inserting bra cups into the bodice, so that will involve slightly different measurements. And, designing the pattern for the bead work and practicing on the silk.

Making progress.