Making a new dress form. Research.
A few Christmases back, my husband (then boyfriend), gave me his late grandmother's dress form. It was great, but unfortunately it was quite old & many of the plastic adjustment mechanisms were brittle & one by one they broke during adjustment. It was OK though, because between the two of us we held them together at the correct measurements with duct tape. It's served me pretty well & made things like hemming a lot easier, however I've found that as I've developed & tackled bigger projects it's had some downfalls.
The biggest downfall is the gaps between the moving pieces. For some reason where I like to have my waistline is right where the gap in the bodice is. This makes the waist a little tricky to fit. Also whilst the general measurements are correct, (bust, waist, hips, etc) the profiles are not. For instance I have very pronounced boobs, whilst the dress form doesn't, it's more of a soft slope upwards, this makes high waisted or empire line dresses quite difficult to fit.
So my conclusion to this protracted essay, is that I need a new dress form. BUT they are hugely expensive, especially if you have one made to your body shape. So I'm going to attempt to make my own. I've found a couple of websites & videos, (included above & here). At the moment I'm thinking I'll go for the duct tape option, it looks to be the easiest (& certainly the cleanest) way of doing it.
I'm not sure when I'll have the time to do this, especially since I'll need an assisstant (any volunteers?), but I'll certainly keep you posted on the process & results.
