Dress Form Makeover

I did it!  I recovered my dress form!

I've been putting it off because I knew it would be a difficult.

It turned out to be one of the most challenging sewing projects I've ever done.

I found her at a thrift shop a few years ago.

I was so excited to find it but not so excited about the purple color.

I wanted to use it for photographing my hand knit and crochet items.

But, purple doesn't go with most of them.

The Acme label is fun...

But, the purple had to go!

I started creating a pattern with tissue paper, pins, tape and a pencil.

Next, I used used the tissue as a pattern for some white muslin.

I roughly cut it out and pinned it onto the dress form.

I made more adjustments, sewed sections together and tweaked until it worked.

Then, I trimmed the muslin pieces (with seam allowances) and un-stitched them to use as a pattern

for the fabric I wanted to use for recovering.  I still had to do a lot of tweaking to get it just right.

I did a LOT of sewing and seam ripping!  When I got all the pieces sewn together and just right

(with one side left open), I slipped it on the dress form, smoothed, stretched and pinned the final

seam together.  Luckily, I was tired that night and left it until the next day.  That created a crease where it was pinned and I was able to take it off the next day to fold it over and press it into place.

I put it back onto the dress form and that folded edge made it much easier to hand stitch together.  

Lastly, I made gathered fabric flowers to fill in the armholes.

Ta da!

I think the total cost to re-cover her was about $6!

 I imagined the flowers and ruffles from the beginning.

I absolutely love how it turned out.  So frilly and pretty!

 I'm excited to have a neutral dress form to use for photographing my future projects.

She's very pretty to look at too!   :-)