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Post by Monique on Aug 1, 2014 8:49:56 GMT
Hi all,
I have a dress form in a medium size that will accommodate things I make for my adult daughter - which means it's not an exact copy of her, but near enough to be handy when she's not around, to see how the garment hangs. To be a useful fitting tool for myself, it needs more padding and preferably, I'd like to use the one form for both of us.
So....I was wondering how you manage to fit yourselves and if you have any experience with the Fabulous Fit system (just the padding). The idea of a duct tape model makes me claustrophobic, and a plaster one would be too rigid (as I am working on losing some weight too).
My problem:
The FF padding is not sold anywhere local and only from the US Amazon, which will not ship it to me in The Netherlands. Nancy's Notions does ship, but $99 plus shipping makes it an expensive gamble. A gamble because I keep reading really mixed (with some extremely negative) reviews on quality and customer service. My email to the FF company is still unanswered, after many weeks, which doesn't make me any more confident in buying.
At this point, I'm thinking of making my own padding with tricot layers and batting, filled bra, etc. Probably a lot cheaper in the long run too.
Any thoughts? I'd be grateful!
Thanks,
Monique
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Post by Monique on Aug 1, 2014 8:51:08 GMT
Note to clarify: I meant the customer service of the FF company. Nancy's Notions has always been great.
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Din
Couturier
Posts: 6 
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Post by Din on Aug 2, 2014 19:08:13 GMT
I have the same issue. I'm going to have to pad out my dressform to get it to reflect my actual measurements. I was looking at the Fabulous Fit system, but I'm reluctant to buy it because of the reviews. I came across this post and she uses shoulder pads and batting to reshape her dressform. I'm willing to give this a try before I try Fabulous Fit. I was listening to a podcast with Kenneth King and he talked about moulages and padding out forms. It seems like a lot of work, but I'm happy to do it if it helps me to get a better fit. I'm going to do more research on moulages because I feel like it'll be helpful. Hope this helps. |
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Post by Monique on Aug 3, 2014 7:28:06 GMT
Hi Din,
Oh, this is great and exactly what I need. Thank you so much! No Fabulous Fit system for me then, and I don't mind the work as long as I don't get suffocated in the process or feel I've paid too much. :-) And of course, shoulder and bust pads are a good short-cut I hadn't yet thought of.
Thanks again!
Monique
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Post by Frabjous on Aug 3, 2014 9:58:00 GMT
I've seen the FF presentation at the PR weekend in New York, and I was not convinced, mostly because the price too high. You can pad a dress form and make the padding removable, there was an article in one of the old Threads issues. Maybe this is something we can do together as a group if more people are interested. I have very basic padding on my form - I will post some pictures when I am back from holiday mid August. Right now I can only log in and post  |
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Din
Couturier
Posts: 6
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Post by Din on Aug 3, 2014 12:55:51 GMT
Monique: You're welcome! Glad I could help. I've seen the FF presentation at the PR weekend in New York, and I was not convinced, mostly because the price too high. You can pad a dress form and make the padding removable, there was an article in one of the old Threads issues. Maybe this is something we can do together as a group if more people are interested. I have very basic padding on my form - I will post some pictures when I am back from holiday mid August. Right now I can only log in and post Yes, please! I'd love to do this as a group. I really want to learn how to pad out a form properly. While you're on holiday, I'll see if I can find the Threads article and get a head start! |
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Post by Monique on Aug 3, 2014 15:10:38 GMT
Great ideas, much appreciated Din and Marina, thank you.
Monique
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ozviking
Couturier
Hello! I live in Perth Australia. My couture skills are limited, but I try!
Posts: 6
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Post by ozviking on Aug 18, 2014 14:42:06 GMT
I have attempted to pad out my form - unsuccessfully! My problem is my shoulders. You cannot remove slices from a commercial form. My shoulders are sloping and rotated forward - not a huge amount but enough to make padding of a commercial form unworkable. I am in the process of making a duct tape form and it is sooooo much better. See ozviking.wordpress.comSent from my iPad using Tapatalk |
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Lisa
Couturier
Posts: 7
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Post by Lisa on Sept 20, 2014 17:57:23 GMT
  I padded my Dritz dress form using a combination of fluffy polyfill and denser cotton quilt batting. Then I covered it in a fitting shell. I had this idea that adding velcro to the back would allow me to resize it a bit but I probably wouldn't do that again. It does work, but, I don't know, I just won't do it again. The shell needs some work to give it a bit more shape especially in the waist. I've also lost weight since I made this but expect to not have to redo the padding. I assume a smaller shell will just compact the padding which would be welcomed. This is a project I started and never really refined. I haven't sewn since I made it. I had to do a few things to the dress form before I started padding though. I cut it in half and extended it at the waist using a cut up yard stick and screws. I think I needed to add about three inches to make the distance between the apex of my bust and waist correct. If I took the padding off you would see about 8 pieces of vertical wood between the top and bottom half of the form. I am 5'9" but have shorter legs than average. Another issue I had to fix was that the distance between my shoulder and bust apex was too short on the form so I added old shoulder pads to increase this distance. I do recommend getting a smaller dress form than your actual body and making it custom by padding. Sloping shoulders could also be achieved this way. Some issues I want to work on with this dress form are making it less soft. It isn't suitable for draping right now. I want to replace the stand with something more sturdy and I want to make the whole thing less light weight, possibly by filling the hollow core. I think customizing a commercial dress form is a better option for me than trying to wrap my body in paper or duct tapes especially nice my size can fluctuate depending on if I am exercising regularly or not. The padding was cheap too. I used cut strips, cut circles and what ever I needed to make it match my measurements. I just tacked the padding to the layer underneath as I build up layers if it was slipping out of place at all. Attachments:
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Lisa
Couturier
Posts: 7
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Post by Lisa on Sept 20, 2014 18:12:58 GMT
One thing I would suggest in padding a form is getting all the vertical points correct before padding, right position of shoulders, bust, waist especially before padding out.
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Din
Couturier
Posts: 6
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Post by Din on Oct 1, 2014 18:04:14 GMT
Hi everyone, Craftsy Just added this class Customize Your Dress Form. I can't vouch for it because I haven't bought it yet, but I will. It looks promising. |
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Post by sktennessee on Oct 17, 2014 22:18:31 GMT
Customizing a regular dress form presents a huge number of "engineering" type problems. Seems as if we could all learn from any solutions that are found. The "how" seems easy enough, but the actual execution with a workable end product has escaped me so far. A detailed description of how any one person did theirs and what worked and didn't work would be very welcome. My goal is to have a dress form that I can use for fitting a pattern and draping fabric. The ability to change the form as I change (which I most certainly will) is essential.
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Post by karenv on Oct 22, 2014 8:37:36 GMT
I live in the Philippines and have a few sewing friends (never met most of them, but we have a sewing Facebook group) who want to make dressmakers dummies in their own size. We are tempted by the duct tape idea but I had a dummy made to measure decades ago and I remember that the fit was off because standing still for 2 hours is very hard! Your posture slumps and that is really an important part of fitting. So we are thinking about padding out existing dressmakers's dummies to size and the tips on adjusting length first are really interesting. The only dummies you can buy here are fiber glass mannequins…. in local (short) sizes! My own personal challenge is that I have a AA bust and the dummies are all probably Bs so I probably need to take a hacksaw to the boobs first as well…. If we ever get round to it, I will post pictures here!
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Enid
Couturier
Posts: 1
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Post by Enid on Oct 30, 2014 13:46:59 GMT
I just finished fitting my dress form based on what I learned at a class at the Novi Sewing Expo from Joe Vecchiarelli who does the fitting for "Dancing with the Stars", as well as measurements and a tip from the Craftsy class on Patternmaking Basics by Suzy Furrer. I have a fairly small budget, so I bought the dress form from JoAnns when it was on sale before Christmas. I bought it in a smaller size so that I could pad it up. Joe Vecchiarelli starts with a smaller size, the one that fits the largest measurement, or even smaller if the person wants to lose weight. He uses 3 inch batting (regular polyester) for the waist and 7 inch batting for the hips. He uses a bra for the top and pads it. I started with my list of measurements from Suzy Furrer's class and padded the waist and hips to match. Then I had my husband (an engineer who is good with precision) help me do front and back measurements and side to side measurements (a little bit like how Marina did measurements for the straight skirt) to figure out how to distribute the measurement accurately. Then I used Suzy Furrer's suggestion to cover the whole thing with ace wrap to make it smooth. I stuck a clip from the ace wrap inside the wrap to represent the belly button. Based on what I'm reading here, I plan to look more closely at the shoulders, but I think I'm fairly close to my dress form there except that the shoulders are wider than mine which I don't see that I can change. When I work with it, I dress her in whatever bra I plan to wear, and that so far has worked fine. It was just finished recently, so I haven't worked with it much. I couldn't figure out how to add pictures here, so I am putting this text and the pictures on my blog so you can see what I did. sewing-projects.blogspot.com/2014/10/dress-form.html One item I bought at the Expo was some very narrow tape. It looked like quarter inch painter's tape. So far it's been more helpful marking seam lines on my sewing machine, but I may eventually add all sorts of identifying lines to the dress form if it seems helpful. Apparently the tape is hard to find, but I think you might be able use a jigsaw to cut a quarter inch off of a roll of painter's tape. Or it might be safer to trim it by hand. I bought the roll so that I wouldn't have to figure that part of it out. |
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Post by Frabjous on Nov 4, 2014 6:33:21 GMT
Enid, thanks for sharing the steps. By the way, I also use a 1/4" tape for marking seam allowance width on my sewing machine - I use Dritz Quilter's Tape (1/4") available on Amazon. |
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