Dress Form, take two!

Previously, on Ladybug Laboratory....

<cue music>

...STITCHES West, 2015...

...Duct Tape Dress Dummy...

And tonight, we bring you...

The Denim Dress Dummy!

(New and improved!  Except not!)

So, in case you haven't figured it out, I tried to use a pattern from Etsy to turn my Duct Tape Dummy into a nice, vaguely presentable dress dummy that I could call a piece of furniture.

I cut up the duct tape and made a muslin from it.  It was terrible.

I drafted another.  It was too small.

A third was too big.

I went with it anyway and transferred it to denim, and then made the Mister pin it down to size.

I seamed all the pin-lines.  I tried it on.  It was about an inch too tight, including the seam allowance, and didn't fit around my waist.

Whatever, I said, I've been working on this all week and I just want to finish it.  I'll lose some weight or adjust my pinning.

I stuffed it and sewed it and measured my finished product.

The wait is 2.8 inches bigger than mine, and the breast stuffing popped up and to the sides.

I think at this point I might just by an adjustable one.

It does look quite creative though!

Duct Tape Dress Form

Tape Slippage!

I previously alluded to a project I had asked for help with while at the STITCHES cabin, and here is the big reveal!

I decided to try my hand at a duct tape double.  The idea is to make a dress form exactly conformed to your body.  With a base t-shirt, you start applying foundation layers of tape in specific areas, and then layer it on, trying not to squish your body or contort it with the tape.  When you're done, you cut yourself out of the back, right through the shirt, and then tape it back up, plug up the holes, and stuff it.

Here's a few tips I learned while making my own:

1. If, for whatever reason, you need to use colored duct tape, buy extra.  Those rolls are small.
2. When you are stuffing the tape, put teeny tiny bits in.  Slide your hand up the sides and stuff the batting in as much as possible.  Fill out the breasts as much as possible.  If you don't, you'll get to the end and realize that they've gone concave on you, and then have to rip it open and stuff it again.  You'll use a lot more than you think you will.  A lot.
3. Don't use old duct-tape.  As you can see in my lovely examples, it slides off, and suddenly your double is stretching by multiple inches, or even popping at the seams.  Which happens.  You won't realize until you flip it over.  Check.
4. Don't have super high expectations.  Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.  We're at a two-thirds success rate in the Stitchers group.  Live and learn.
5. Whatever you do, do NOT watch Silence of the Lambs right before you make this.  Just don't.  It's a bad idea.  You'll feel the scissors on your back and... just trust me.