My aunt and I decided to attempt making a duct tape based dress form!
It turned out rather well, and was certainly a learning experience.
First, I put on a giant t-shirt. My partner went through a phase where all he wore were these shapeless grey t-shirts, so we had plenty to choose from. After making sure my hair was as out of the way as I could possibly make it, we duct taped the shirt to me.
My aunt was my helper lady, and really, she did most of the work! I just stood there, and occasionally let her know if I couldn't breathe haha
When making one of these, it is definitely important to be careful of how tight it gets. I was kind of shocked at how strong and stiff the duct tape actually was once it was on me. We decided that the best way to get around the breathing issue, was to take a deep breath, hold it, and then tape the places that stuck out most when I had a lung full of air.
Also, we found that we ran out of duct tape before we wanted to. I had gotten two rolls of good duct tape, and my aunt had gotten a roll of red dollar store duct tape. If we had one more roll of good duct tape, it would have been perfect.
After the duct tape, we cut the whole thing off, which felt really weird to me.
Here are a couple of pictures before we cut it off:
Front View:
The Back:
Notice the weird mix of duct tapes? lol
Once it was off, and we'd have a few laughs trying it on like a shirt (since my aunt happens to be a very different shape then me) we taped up where we had cut it open.
The original plan was to fill it with some expanding foam, and it seemed like a great plan! We dragged everything outside, since that seemed the best place to deal with the fumes, and sprayed an entire can of foam inside. It barely expanded, however, and therefore did not work out well. It filled less then half of the form. I think maybe it was because we were working in very, VERY cold/snowy conditions (good ol' Canada) but maybe it was the wrong kind of foam, or maybe we didn't have enough. Either way, it just didn't work out as planned.
We brought it back up to my apartment, and after letting it warm up again for half an hour, decided to go with plan B! Plan B happened to be my ridiculous cache of plastic grocery bags. I had been saving them for around two years... I had a lot.
We filled the dress form with those bags, which worked out great. I still have some bags left over, in fact.
Once the dress form was quite solid and filled out, it was time to tape up the neck and dress it.
I wanted to cover it in fabric originally, and/or papier mache, but instead settled with just putting a snug t-shirt on it that I never wear.
I am not sure if it was because the tape was too tight, or if it was the t-shirt, or if we lacked enough bags, but the bust wasn't actual size when we were done. So, to remedy this, we put an appropriately sized bra that I never wear on it, and then stuffed that with more bags. We had to put this bra on over the snug t-shirt, of course, to avoid smooshing the progress we had made.
Anyway, after doing some measuring to be sure it was all correct and in order, we were finished! The whole project took us about 4 hours, I think.
This is my aunt, relaxing with the dress form.
(We put one of my most comfortable shirts on over top of the red t-shirt I earlier mentioned, to see if it would look right):
And here is my son, climbing all over the dress form/getting distracted by the cat (who also showed some mild interest):
I guess all that is really left to do, is name my dress form. I've been mulling that over since we finished creating it, and still have no ideas. Suggestions??
