The Dress Form

Even before I really knew anything about proper clothes-making or pattern drafting, I wanted a dress form.

Most patterns or sewing projects require some basic fitting, and most of my early sewing failures as a girl came from my ignorance of how fitting worked. Those failures generally resulted in an unwearable project–usually too small, or too tight over critical areas (like armholes, etc.). Probably I had not understood what fitting was regardless, but my mother frequently attempted to clue me in to the problem after the failure. “You need to measure yourself.” What, eyeballing a piece of fabric and cutting vague body shapes isn’t good enough?

Thus, my desire for a dress form was born.

I had an adjustable dress form in the past, but the shape was quite un-ideal, and ultimately I could not take it with me to Japan, anyway.

Recently, as in this summer, I was fortunate to pick up a ladies mannequin at a clothing shop at the local mini-mall near my home that was going through a renewal, just for 1000 yen (approximately $10)! It was too good to pass up. They also had children and male forms, but I knew my husband would less thrilled that I take those too.

As you can see from the picture above, she is very thin. More in line with the bodies of Japanese women and much thinner than myself. To make her more inline with my own body, I used strips of white polyester fleece I had leftover, bra cups, and pins to thicken her waist, hips and bust.

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I think I did a reasonable job, but it occurred to me recently that the differences in our shoulders and torso are unideal for drapping moulage or precise fitting.

Therefore, I have decided to make a precise sloper of my body to encase my existing mannequin. A side benefit is to have a soft cushioned layer better suited to pinning fabric. The current body is constructed of Styrofoam beneath the cover.

I am using this (Constructing the Basic Bodice Block By: gedwoods) and this (Drafting the Basic Skirt By: gedwoods) resource to construct my sloper.

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Although I have a rough sloper I took from the Pattern Magic Vol. 1, I thought there was value in learning to draft a sloper based on my measurements, rather than an approximate size.