Making a me-shaped dress form: Part 1
Step 1: get tired of trying to fit clothes at the shoulders with flat patterning because it's pretty much impossible to use your own body as your mannequin as soon as you need to start draping the back of any garment. I could get pretty close by making gradual tweaks to my blouse sloper pattern over a series of wearable mockups, but something about the neck and shoulders area just never fit right, especially when trying to fit high-necked blouses and dresses
Step 2: do a bunch of research about custom dress forms by watching other people make them and give their opinions. Options include:
Beatrice forms: the most accurate way, also the most expensive, also impossible for me to do because I don't have an iPhone or anybody to scan me
Those Dritz adjustable forms: overpriced garbage piece of plastic nobody recommends
The Morgan Donner plaster cast + spray foam method: too messy and not even that accurate unless you make extensive changes to the foam form once it's freed from the plaster so what even is the point? Also some people's spray foam started liquifying and oozing out of their forms after a couple months?
The duct tape method: ugly and sticky and not pinnable. Also probably comes out a size too big, since you're wrapping layers of plastic wrap and tape around yourself?
The Bootstrap DIY form: can be made from pretty fabrics, but not accurate to anyone's shape, and also the shoulders are cut off at the armsye, so everyone's mannequin looks weirdly long and narrow in the chest
Buying a dressmaking form that's smaller than you and padding it out to your measurements: First of all, find me an adult sized female dress form that's smaller than a bust 32, I'll wait. Second of all, even if you find one with a flatter chest than mine, I defy you to find one that's as shortwaisted and swaybacked as I am
The Stitchery's hybrid duct-tape-pattern-meets-Bootstrap-sew-it-yourself-out-of-pinnable-foam method: 👀😯🤔... but I don't want to stuff it with poly-fil because it's just going to come out lumpy and misshapen... unless...
Step 3: decide to rope your brother (who was just visiting for the weekend) into wrapping you in duct tape so you can get a pattern, which you plan to sew out of fusible foam interfacing/stabilizer because it's sturdier than plain canvas fabric (which the Bootstrap pattern calls for) and better at holding its shape. And then, instead of stuffing with poly-fil, which can lose its shape over time, what if you imagine your body cut in cross sections (axially, like a CT scan) and take a bunch of rulers and a flexicurve and measure your AP and transverse diameters, and then physically reconstruct your body out of stacked layers of upholstery foam that's been cut into the correct shapes and dimensions at each level?
Making a me-shaped dress form: Part 2
Step 4:
Step 5: sew the foam pieces together with ugly whipstitches visible from the outside. Who cares? It's all going to be covered eventually anyway, and the seam lines aren't even that symmetrical since I drew them on the duct tape by eyeballing it
Step 6: take a big sheet of 3" upholstery foam and start cutting out axial me-shaped pieces and gluing them together. Realize part way through that you need to adjust the fit by taking in the center front seam. End up just pinning the center front closed as you work your way up the mannequin, so you can trim the excess and sew it closed later
I ended up using poly-fil in the actual bust cups. The foam shell is good enough at holding its shape, but I wanted something easily squished for in case I want to put my 18th century stays on. You can't tell, but the entire upper chest and shoulder area is still empty because I realized I can't easily measure myself at this level, where my scoliosis is at its worst and my arms can't really reach backward. I'm going to tackle the rest of the chest later, maybe by taking a dress that I already know fits me well and putting it on top of the form, then filling out the rest of her to fill it out without overstuffing.
Step 7: look at the pretty outer fabric that you plan to eventually make into an aesthetic cover for the mannequin to hide all the ugly stitches on the foam. And then look at the pretty tripod stand you got, for eventually mounting the mannequin on. And then realize this is going to take way longer than you thought because you still need to revise the sewing pattern and probably drape it on the finished foam mannequin, and you can't do that until you figure out how to mount it on top of the stand.
Making a me-shaped dress form: Part 3
Step 8: trim away the excess exterior foam from the center front and stitch the seam all the way up. Then take scraps of upholstery foam and poly-fil to fill out the rest of the upper chest and shoulder area, being sure to check measurements. This part was super finicky and I'm still not 100% sure I have the left armacye area right. But I'd rather have it be too big (so that any sleeves I drape on it will fit me) so I just went with it.
It's an absolute mess, but it's all going to be covered eventually with another piece of foam to fill in the shoulders, so I made myself let it go.
Step 9: add the shoulder pieces. This step is optional, but I'm doing it because I don't like how Bootstrap dress forms cut their shoulders off at the armscye. It makes everyone's torso look weirdly long with a droopy bust. So I made sure to get a pattern of my shoulder area when I did the duct tape thing. I know professional dress forms sometimes come with collapsible shoulders bc they're rigid and it makes it easier to put garments on them that way. But my shoulders will be stuffed with upholstery foam, which squishes down if I need to squeeze a garment over it and retakes its shape when it's no longer compressed.
I also cut a circle bit of foam to plug up the neck hole opening (not pictured).
Step 10: I needed a way to mount the dress form onto my mannequin stand. So I got this bit of plastic pipe from the plumbing section of the hardware store that has an inside diameter just wide enough to slip over the metal pole of the stand. I figured I would somehow insert the pipe into the dress form to act sort of like a spine for it, and then I would be able to use a C-clamp or something to make the form taller (e.g. if I need to make something that I plan to wear heels with). At first I thought I would use a utility knife to cut a channel to feed the pipe through the layers of foam inside the mannequin, but then I realized I would have no way to control what direction the knife was going once it got deep enough inside the mannequin that I couldn't reach the handle, and I needed this thing to go like 20 inches deep into the mannequin. So then I took a piece of sandpaper and sharpened the edge of the pipe so that I could just screw it into the bottom of the mannequin. Very carefully. So that she didn't tilt to one side and so the pipe didn't poke a hole through her
This looked very strange, and I'm sure my neighbors would have had many questions if they had been walking by and seen me doing this. But nobody saw me and I got the mannequin assembled on the stand:
I tried some on my clothes on her, and they fit well enough. I'm going to call this a stopover point and go do some other sewing projects for a while before I come back to make the outer fabric cover. For now, she's perfectly serviceable and will be a big help for when I need to hem skirts and drape sleeves.
(Btw I'm totally taking name suggestions for her)
@atelierpleiades @backstitchbroidery @insatiablytaken
Since [Ms. Mannequin Name TBD Still Accepting Suggestions] is still in the market for a name and people are expressing interest in this project, I just wanted to warn people that stuffing this thing with upholstery foam might be one of the most frustrating things I have ever done. So here are some things I either did to help the process go more smoothly or wish I'd done to save myself a lot of screaming, cursing, and bleeding on things:
Wear a horizontal striped knit shirt when taking measurements for the foam layers. The knit will conform to your curves, and the stripes help you align your tape measure so you know it's not slipping or dipping too low in places. And make sure the stripes are even and horizontal and that your side seams are where you want them before you measure. I was lucky enough to have a striped turtleneck that had a thin white stripe every 1.5 inches on my shirt, so all I had to do was measure my AP (front-to-back) and transverse (side-to-side) diameters along every other white stripe. I then drew a rectangle with those dimensions, and used a Flexicurve to get the contours of my front left, front right, back left, and back right to make a generally me-shaped slice of foam that fit inside that rectangle. For bonus points, you can even pin a piece of ribbon to your shirt to mark your center front and center back, to make measuring easier.
It would actually help a lot to use one of these rulers that have a slidey part that acts like a giant pair of calipers to help take those diameter measurements. I didn't have one of these, and I don't think the hardware store had them either, just tiny ones for measuring stuff less than 8 inches long. I'm pretty sure that seller I linked was the one who invented them? I jerry-rigged together a yardstick, a 12" ruler, and a straight edge to approximate something like that measuring tool, then cut the shape out of cardstock to place inside my mannequin and then trimmed off the excess before using that cardstock as a template for cutting out the foam. For the pieces that tapered up or down (i.e. when going from the hips up to the waist, the diameters and circumferences of your shapes will get smaller), I just trimmed the edges diagonally to taper them until they fit inside my foam shell and matched my dimensions for the next level.
While we're at it, if you have access to a second human, it's probably best to let them do all the measuring with the rulers and Flexicurves. I was able to do it on myself for the hips, waist, and lower chest, but when it came to the bust and upper chest, I ended up just having to wing it by progressively shaving down a piece a foam until it fit inside my shell and then checking the outside circumferences with the tape measure, because I couldn't take accurate AP/transverse diameter measurements while contorting my arms and upper body.
When cutting foam with a utility knife, you obviously want to be very careful to keep your other hand away from the blade, but you also want to be careful to angle your blade straight up and down. If you go in at an angle, the reverse side of your foam will come out either too big or too small.
By the way, once you know your foam shape is correct and you're committing to it and moving on to the next layer, you want to glue it down to the layer below. I used Aleene's tacky glue and it was not up to this particular task. It did dry eventually, but it took waaaay too long, so my foam layers would shift around as I worked, and when I tried to readjust them, I'd get wet sticky glue all over my hands. The only good thing about this glue is that it's water-soluble and easily washed off. The situation turned nightmarish when I got to the chest area where I was also using poly-fil for stuffing, and the individual strands of the fiber fill would get glue on them and be sticky and wet but not actually stick to anything besides my fingers, and I ended up developing a burning hatred for both Aleene's tacky glue and poly-fil.
When you're shoving layers of foam inside your form, the lower layers will try to escape out the bottom. To combat this, I used giant ugly whipstitches to sew the bottom edge to the outer foam shell. I ended up also using this technique to close up the foam that was acting as the armhole and neck hole covers. Don't pull your stitches too tight, or the form will pucker. The upholstery foam is surprisingly pleasant to sew through. Kind of reminds me of suturing to close up the skin after surgeries as a med student.
Absolutely measure yourself, not the foam shell you are trying to fill. The foam stabilizer material did stretch a bit, even when I tried to cut it along the grain that it stretched along the least. So if you go into this trying to fill it snugly with the upholstery foam, you will overstuff it and end up with a dress form that is too big.
Stuffing the form will inevitably end up with you wanting to scream and curse as you get to the upper chest area. That's because you have way less room to see what you're doing once the center front seam has been stitched closed. You'll only be able to access the side of the mannequin through the arm holes and neck hole, so you'll have to scrunch up your pieces of upholstery foam to fit them through the openings. Feel free to divide up these layers into a left half and a right half if you'd rather work with smaller pieces. Just make sure you secure them with glue or stitches so they don't shift around when you're trying to use the dress form.
Come to think of it, a curved upholstery needle would have come in handy. I made do without one, but it certainly would have helped when I was closing up the center front seam or stitching down where my bust cups end (to prevent the poly-fil stuffing inside the bust cups from sliding down and going on an adventure elsewhere inside the mannequin.
By the way, I seamed my outer foam shell with hand whipstitches because my sewing machine doesn't do zigzag stitches. You can absolutely do this with a machine if it has a zigzag stitch (see The Stitchery's dress form video), but I knew going in that my pattern might be too big, so hand stitching it allowed me to pull the stitches tight and slightly adjust the fit as I went along.
Other things people might find useful. Here are the materials I used (for better or for worse):
Aleene's tacky glue (gets the job done eventually and doesn't melt the foam like hot glue might have but takes forever and is very messy and rage inducing)
3" upholstery foam. I got mine here and had more than enough. I might even have enough left over to make Cody an entire cat sofa/Victorian fainting couch if I were so inclined someday. Your mileage may vary depending on your size and height*. I ended up with a lot of scraps from trimming the pieces down to fit (which I plan to cut down into smaller pieces to use as stuffing for other projects; they also make decent pincushions, which was why I chose this foam to make into a pinnable mannequin). The drawback was that my utility knife was barely long enough to cut through all 3 inches of foam, so the cut edge on one side looked nice because I cut it while tracing a cardstock template, and the other side looked like a rat chewed through it. You could also look into 2" or 1" foam sheets or rolls, but you'll need more of it since you'll need to make more layers, and I'm pretty sure they only sell those for a higher cost per surface area of foam.
I got my foam interfacing for the outer shell from a local sewing store. It was in an unlabeled roll under the cutting counter, and the lady at the store recommended it for if you're making a bag where you need it to be able to keep its shape when it's empty. I can't point you to the exact online product you can order, but it's a sheet of foam about 1/8" thick and sandwiched between 2 layers of fabric, about 48" wide. I got 1 yard of it and only used about half, but I was also being very economical about the placement of my pattern pieces. I've worked with Pellon's 70 Peltex sew-in ultra firm stabilizer before (for my Elphaba hat) and I think it might work too, minus the being fusible part. I haven't tried Pellon's FF77 or FF78F1 Flex-Foam interfacings which are available on Wawak, and I don't know what thickness they are, but you can try those if you don't have a local sewing/quilting store. It goes without saying, though that if you are using a polyester-based material, be careful to turn your iron settings low or use a pressing cloth to avoid melting it. Honestly, I could have used a non fusible interfacing for this, because the foam I used just did not want to stick to the upholstery foam inside, no matter how much steam I hit it with.
Tripod stand: I got mine online from Store Supply Warehouse. It's very cute, available in 3 colors, fairly study (unless you put a 5 lb historical costume on your mannequin where the back is very heavy; then it might tip over if your center back isn't aligned with one of the feet), and didn't take that long to ship. The website doesn't give details on the dimensions, but the wooden base is 25" tall, and entire thing including the top of the metal pole measures out to 43" tall. The top of the metal pole has an outside diameter of 5/8" (in case you want to do what I did and stick another pole over it) and an inside diameter of 1/2" (not sure why you would need this, but I included it anyway).
PCV pipe: The one I got had an inside diameter of 3/4" because I couldn't find a 5/8" pipe and didn't want it to be too tight a fit. If you're my height*, you'll probably only need a pipe between 18 and 24 inches long. Yep, I shoved a piece of plumbing pipe up the bottom of my foam mannequin so that I could slide that pipe over the metal pole of the tripod stand. Don't do this around other people unless they plan to help hold the mannequin down or help make sure you are not veering off course. Otherwise, they will just have a million questions to ask you.
C-clamp: any C-clamp from the hardware store will do as long as it's big enough to fit around the metal pole of the tripod stand and strong enough to hold up the mannequin (my final form weighed 2 lbs 3 oz including the PCV pipe) and whatever heavy historical understructures you plan to put on it. My only gripe with C-clamps is that they're meant for holding flat things together, but my clamp is supposed to go on the metal pole to adjust the height of my dress form. If I don't get the angle of the clamp just right, then it can slip off. I might need to get some rubber pads to stick on the ends of the C-clamp to adjust its fit.
*And here are my measurements (in modern undergarments, which is what I wore under the duct tape), in case you want to compare how much material you might need. Sorry, metric people, in advance:
Height 5' 4.5"
Neck circumference: 12.5" (I made the mannequin's neck 13" around by accident, but I'm keeping it because I don't mind having ease)
Shoulders (measured across back, anatomically from acromion to acromion): 13"
Overbust circumference (while breathing in): 32"
Bust circumference: 32"
Waist circumference: 25-25.25"
Hip circumference (measured around the greatest circumference around the greater trochanters of my femurs): 36"
Back length (from base of neck to waist): 15"
Shoulder to waist height (measuring over the apex of the bust): 15"
Bust to waist height: 5.5"
Waist to hip height: 10" measured from the front, 10.5" from the side seam, 10.75" from the back (swaybacked)
Waist to floor height: 40" measured from the front
Hip to floor height: 30" measured from the front
Honestly, I would only recommend this foam shell + axial foam slices method if you aren't able to find a mannequin smaller than you to start with that you can pad out. The only ones I could find were size 00 professional dress forms which were still too wide at the shoulder and probably a B cup because everything that's standardized is a fucking B cup and cost over $400.