Duct Tape Dress Form II

After posting about my hard work on taping down the dressform, I started stuffing it the very next day.  This took longer and was much more difficult than expected.  The hardest part was making inserts to cap off the holes for the arms and bottom.  I just cut out circles for the arms using foam board and my duct tape sticker for a stencil.

The base was harder because I obviously didn’t want it to be a round circle.  I decided to cut a general oval shape and use the tape to finish off any gaps. I put a hangar into the neck hole so I can hang the dress form up if I need it out of the way (my husband vetoed hanging it from the ceiling on a chain like a pre-electricity chandelier that I could raise and lower as needed).

Once I got the upper holes closed off I put a half oval piece of cardboard on the bottom of the form and started stuffing and stuffing and stuffing.  I went through about 1 and a half of the large 50 oz bags of poly fill, you would probably only need one if you’re fairly slim.  I made sure to really cram around the shoulders and bust area to help it keep its shape.

I closed it up at the bottom with a few more pieces of cardboard and duct tape, placed it on a stool that turned out to put the form at almost exactly my height (yay!), and took a few proud photos (proud of a completed project but if you have any body issues, seeing a pretty accurate model of yourself can be a bit depressing fyi) and called it a day….

*****

…The next morning… *dramatic music* “Dun, dun, dun!” I found an exploded dress form!  Sorry I couldn’t get a better picture of this but the seam along the back had popped open and poly-fill was strewn about the floor!!  The horror!!!

I, being a dummy, didn’t get a better picture but trust me, it was a disaster!  Here you can see how I started to tape my poor shell back together with this black super duct tape my hubby gave me to comfort me in my grieving.  Lesson learned from this: just taping up the seam is not enough – wrap that sucker around and around and around!

I had to take all the stuffing back out, wrap duct tape around the stomach area and re-tape the seam closed.  Then I could begin stuffing again and I hate to admit it but the left shoulder is a bit wonky from the experience.  It’s slightly concaved but I think it will still work fine for checking dress straps as I try to resume my self-teaching of how to sew cloths.  What I’m saddest about is that there is how lots of black tape over my cute pink tape, in a circle around the stomach and all over the back and low and behold – Duck Tape appears to no longer be making this tape!!! I can only find it for around $8 per roll with shipping on ebay and I’m just too cheap for that, leaving my poor dress form looking a lot shoddier than I had hoped but still working.

I will probably eventually pick up 3 rolls of a different color and re-wrap it in one style but if you decide to do this project, don’t make my mistake of getting too excited about putting on the cute tape!  Wait till you’ve cut off the form and securely closed the seam with several layers.  Then wrap around the whole form like a belt at several points to keep the seam from splitting open before you add cute decorative tape!