craftgrrl | Home-made Dress Form (Reply)

I got this idea from a post on craftster.org. I'd post the link but I can't find it, so I'll describe everything I did to come up with this:

I want to get one of those cone-shape tomatoe plant cages that you use to hold the plant up and stuff, as the form for the below the waist area.

What I did:

I put on an old t-shirt that was pretty tight. (you will need to sacrafice this shirt so dont use anything you want to wear again.

I had someone ducktape me up overlapping the tape and doing a few layers of tape [over the t-shirt]. The tape can be pretty restricting so I dont suggest doing this if you are clostraphobic like myself, because in search of a scissor I started panicking while in the tape. Also it can force you to take shallow breaths which also freaked me out [dont do it so tight as I did!]. Try to get it as loose as possible without loosing your form or size.

Have someone cut you out of the tape cast down the back.

Tape the mold back together and than stuff it with foam, fluff, fabric, etc. Fill in the boobers (if your a girl), and try to keep the shape the best you can.

After it is stuffed and taped up so the stuffing stays in, lay it out on a piece of rectangular fabric slightly wider than the widest point on your form.

Lay another piece the same size as the other, over the form

Pin the 2 sheets together around the curves of your form on the verticle sides only. Keep it tight and close as possible to the curves to maintain the shape and size. Also only leave a small space between your pins.

Cut the back piece of fabric down the middle. Sew the contours made by your pins keeping the seam as close to the pins as possible.

Once this is sewn you will have to turn it indside out to make it the right way which it will fit around your form.

Now keeping this cover on your form involves mending where you cut in the back. I sewed a zipper to this so that I could easily remove it if it got dirty or wrinkled.

Now the top and the bottom of the cover are still open, you can sew these up or tie them with a rubber band like I did. I stuck my form on a portable outdoor shower stand that I had and never used. If you want to do something like this than make sure you put the pole center through you form before it is taped [after stuffing]. I tied the rubber bands around the pole. [Luckily my pole was actually 2 diff poles connected at with a black plastic thing that acts as a stopper so the rubberbands and the form doesn't slide down with gravity.

Be crafty and jury rig it the best you can like I pretty much did :]

Now to sewing clothes that aren't to big or to small on me !