Custom Dress Form v2.0: part 2

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OK, her name is not going to be Darling Judy. Gosh is there nothing that pornography won’t touch on the internet? I was thinking more Blythe doll than what google yields up. Urgh.

Right now I’m considering Quasimodo. Yes, you heard me right. And it’s because of this:

2b-4

I knew I was lopsided. But I didn’t know I was that bad! LOL. No wonder my long necklaces never want to stay in the middle. They always want to loop around my left boob.

Then again I might have butchered her figure during the reduction surgery. Or at least exaggerated the lopsidedness. In any case, Quasimodo is now the new nick name my DOH has for me whenever he wants to wind me up. He’s a bit of the Joker and likes to wind everyone up.

Anyway, here’s Quasimodo after her reduction surgery with subsequent reinforcement layers:

And a few notes about the process…

  • Reduction plan: The wadding / batting I’m going to use measures about 1/4″ when compressed. So I reasoned that I’d have to take out 1/2″ depth-wise (Front to Back) and width-wise (Side to Side). I opted to do this as 1/2″ at side seams and CF/CB so that the neck is also reduced. I also removed 1/4″ height at about upper armhole to account extra height at the shoulder that the padding will add. The additional fish-eye darts at the princess seams are to adjust for the extra 1″ breathing ease that was wrapped into the chest and waist.
  • This plan does mess up the bust a bit – they’re now too close together.  2a-1 So I first tried a mastectomy (4-pointed star-shaped reduction on each boob). That didn’t work brilliantly. I ended up having to do breast reconstructive surgery. For her breast augmentation I taped on two foam bra cups I salvaged from some old dress. This allowed me to position the bust mounds where they need to be. It also deepened the cleavage to the correct depth – DOH couldn’t get the cross-your-heart duct-tape wrapping tight enough to maintain the cleavage depth. I found double-sided tape to be quite handy for this task. PVA glue & the paper tape weren’t as effective by themselves.
  • I did the surgery before the reinforcement layers. So that’s on the 4-outside + 1-inside layers of self-adhesive paper packing tape. At this stage the form is firm enough to hold the shape temporarily, but not too hard to cut with scissors.
  • I should have traced the outlines of the hem, arm, and neck holes before performing the surgery. This is to ensure the final form more accurately mirror my depth & width. It was on my check list but I still forgot. Oops. Fingers crossed I haven’t changed her shape too much.
  • Once I got the form to it’s final shape, I reinforced the form with 1-outside + 5-inside layers of the gummed paper packaging tape that you have to moisten first. This type of tape does seem firmer than the self-adhesive type. So I’m glad I got these as well for the reinforcement. But it was quite fiddly, especially as I had to cut the tape into smaller pieces to go smoothly over curves. I don’t think my DOH would have had the patience to use this during wrapping. Hack, I don’t think I’d be able to hold my breath long enough to be wrapped in this type of tape and wait for it to be dry enough to be cut off me.
  • 2b-5 The 11-layers total of tapes gave me a relatively stable form that’s about 1/8″ thick. It’s probably not as firm as 1/8″ of solid papier mache since it’s impossible to compact the paper tapes 100% and squeeze out all the air bubbles. But I think it’s firm enough to hold it’s shape without stuffing. So I’m going to leave her hollow and just do what needs to be done inside to ensure her PVC spine that’s going to go over the stand is straight & perpendicular to the floor.

Next up, figuring out her guts!

Custom Dress Form v2.0: part 1

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So, with new bra sorted, I finally got started on my new custom dress form. I haven’t settled on a name for her yet, so for now let’s just call her Darling Judy, or DJ for short.

Big Bertha, my last one, was a Duct Tape Double who became a bit lumpen over time, and was always too thick & sticky skinned to pin into. So this time around I’m trying a modified Paper Tape Double.

I’m using mostly Connie Crawford’s instruction, which is in her patternmaking book. There was a slightly more detailed version from Sew News Aug 2006, which sadly isn’t on their website anymore (I saved the pages a while back). You can try Web Archive, but the  photo illustrations are all missing. She also has the dress form instruction on a DVD and there’s a sample clip on YouTube which I found quite useful.

Here’s DJ after she was cut off and re-joined:

Gosh I’m lopsided or what!

Anyway, a few tips & lessons that the instructions don’t mention:

  • Here DJ has 4 layers of paper tape on the outside and 1 layer on the inside. The key measurements aren’t too far off. The waist and chest are about 1″ bigger than my smallest / exhale measurement. But I think that’s inevitable since you can’t exactly not breath while being wrapped. With these wrapped forms you’ll always get at least the breathing ease if not the full wearing ease. And that’s fine if you’re not using the form strictly for zero-ease garments like bustier.
  • For wrappee comfort I’d recommend following Connie’s wrapping order, but mark the key lines as you go rather than leave it till you’re all wrapped up. So hem after the skirt part is wrapped, CB after the torso back’s wrapped, Side Seams & Armholes after the torso sides are wrapped, most of CF right before you close off the abdomen. This way, you get to breath for as long as possible! An experienced wrapper may be able to complete the wrapping & marking in an hour, but we took close to 3 hours to wrap and cut off. So that’s a long time of not breathing if you’re not careful about wrapping & marking order!
  • I used as small a bin / trash liner as I could to keep unnecessary bulk down. But it wasn’t long enough. So I used cling-film to extend the length, as well as add the neck. If you do use multiple layers of cling-film, make sure you peel off the extra layers from the inside of the dress form before you reinforce the form from the inside with extra layers of paper tape. Otherwise you get air-bubbles between cling-film layers.
  • I used self-adhesive paper packing tape as recommended by Connie since it’s less messy than gummed paper packaging tape which you have to moisten first. But I do plan on further reinforcing the form with multiple layers of the gummed tape from the inside, and maybe another layer on the outside. This is just in case the gummed type is stiffer / longer lasting / sticks better.
  • Marking: it’s not really necessary to mark till you faint! All you really want is key lines to help get the form standing in the same way you do – ie not tilting to the front / back / left / right. So a level hem (parallel to the floor) is key. Level verticals (CF, CB, Side Seams) are also useful.
  • Cutting: Be really careful! I’ve been cut once before. This time I got those blunt-tip bandage scissors and have my DOH go very slowly with the cutting. The built-in breathing ease came in handy here. I was able to exhale and press against the front of the form to yield a little bit of gap at the back princess cutting line so that the scissor wasn’t jabbing into my skin. You can also try Thread’s technique of including a narrow strip of heavy paper under bin / trash liner where the cutting line will be before wrapping. When cutting, the paper would be between the scissor and your skin, thus protecting you from its sharp points.
  • Once you got your form off and reinforced it from the inside and taped on the cardboard pieces to cover the hem / AH / neck holes, you can sew a heavy muslin cover for it if you plan on pinning “into” the form. You will not be able to jab directly into the form – after a few layers the paper is really too stiff. So that much is the same as with Duct Tape Double. But at least you won’t be tempted and end up with gummed pins and bleeding fingers!
  • The cover will need to be skin-tight. (Your Kenneth King Moulage comes in handy here if you’ve made one like me!) If you have any doubt about the accuracy of your new dress form, you should definitely fit the cover on yourself first, then adjust the dress form to fit your more accurate cover. You might have to slash & re-tape if your form is too big, or pad with wadding / batting if it’s too small.

As for DJ, see all those red shaded areas on her? That’s her reduction surgery plan. You see, stopping here would be too easy (!). I plan to torture myself by adapting some of Wolf Form’s professional dress form making process. She’ll be reduced in girth, then covered with wadding / batting, then maybe the old cotton jersey cover I made for Big Bertha but never used (if I can still find it), and finally the drill Moulage cover.

You see, I plan to gift myself a couple of glossy draping books for Birthday / Christmas. So I’d really like a form I can pin into.

Stay tuned to find out how she looks after her surgery!

A year older a tad younger

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Last week I finally made the pilgrimage to the Queen’s brassiere, Rigby & Peller, for a bra-fitting after reading about Karen’s experience on Did You Make That like over a year ago. I meant to go sooner. But I know I’d only trust the branches that are in the snootier part of town, and I never visit those part of town. Too Upper East Side (in NYC parlance) for my taste.

What finally got me off my behind was my upcoming birthday present from my DOH. This year I asked for help making a replacement for Big Bertha, my Duct Tape Double, who sadly passed away this last week. I thought if I’m going to get taped up I might as well see if something can be done to prop up my girls, who have been heading south ever since I hit 40.

And the (surprisingly young) Fitting Assistant did not disappointed. As Karen pointed out, they don’t use tape measure at R&P. These girls are trained to determine your size by observing your body & rack shape and how your current bra fits (if you’re wearing one at the time of fitting – no, thankfully I didn’t have to flash the FA). And she pleased me by announcing that I’m a D on a smaller band size rather than the A-B on the larger band sizes that I’ve been wearing thanks to misinformation from the standard bra sizing charts. I’m pleased because it reinforces my current theory that I should be sewing with a FBA’ed size 8, rather than a standard B-cup size 12. And doubly pleased because all those expensive Vogue designer patterns that I’ve stupid cut out to size 8 decades ago will now be salvageable.

Obviously I won’t flash you either. But I can report that the band now sit level, the underwires fit right against my rib cage under my girls, and there are no longer gaps at the top edges of the cups. My old bras use to ride up in the back and I’d get gaps at the top of the cups which made me think that the cup was too big. In fact it was the opposite. Who would have known!

R&P ain’t cheap. But I was hoping once I got a well-fitting bra I might one day attempt making my own, like so many of you are doing. Unfortunately the two I went for are both molded cups. Maybe next time then.

So, do my girls defy gravity now? Well, there’s no turning back the clock completely. But I think I do detect the slightest rebellious lift…

Old
New
Old
New

What do you think? Have you ever been professionally fitted?

P.S. Now I just need a bit of bum padding. (Oh damn you gravity!)

Brooding & Plotting

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I know I know. I said  I was going  to stop fiddling with the Moulage. But I can’t help it. Especially not with the ladies at Artisan Square egging me on! 😉 So I’ve been experimenting with different ‘sway back’ type adjustments and different grain placements post bending the grainline in places with those ‘sway back’ type adjustments. And I’ll be tweaking the fit to get those vertical ‘balance lines’, well, vertical.

By the way, thanks for all your compliments. If you can get yourself someone patient to help with measurements I highly recommend Mr. King’s Moulage CD book. If you’re hopeless at drafting you can try Fashion Incubator’s saran wrap method instead. I haven’t tried this method but it sounds interesting & relatively quick. The only thing though is you don’t get additional instruction on how to turn the resulting skin-tight pattern into a sloper for further block development.

In the meanwhile, I’ve also been trying to print and have bound more of Mr. King’s Ecole Guerre-Lavigne series CD books. It’s not easy in the UK. There aren’t the ubiquitous & affordable Kinko’s & other chain print & copy shops that you find in NYC. My printer didn’t help by running out of ink.

And just for variety, I’ve also been redoing my croquis after being inspired by the ladies at Artisan Square. And planning a replacement dress form. Big Bertha (my Duct Tape Double) has broke her leg. And she’s a bit lumpen after all these years. So here’s the plan…

dressform-stand

What do you think? Overkill? Well, after Big Bertha broke her leg I’ve been paranoid about making the stand as sturdy as possible and keeping the dress form as light as possible. Big Bertha weighs a not so slight 4kg / 8lb. And her leg was a jointed coat rack, not solid piece of wood. So she started tilting over, even worse than the Leaning Tower of Pisa.

None of the cheap sturdy stand options I’ve googled were cheap by any means in the UK. (You Americans have it soooo good!)

As for the dress form, I was inspired by an article I found in my Threads Archive DVD about the Wolf Forms production process. Turns out they’re made from cardboard Papier Mâché using heavy plaster molds and the final thickness of the Papier Mâché is 3/4″- 1″. No wonder they can be hollow rather than stuffed. They’re made about 1/2″ smaller than final measurement, then padded on the outside with cotton batting, then cotton knit, then finally Irish linen. The article isn’t on Threads public website, but there is a page with some photos. There’s also a How It’s Made TV segment about these Wolf forms on YouTube which is quite fascinating. It doesn’t cover all the details mentioned in the Threads article. But it does show how the collapsible shoulder works / is made!

Moulage Fitting continued

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OK, this is as good as it’s going to get fitting a moulage by myself.

Adjusted muslin 2:




So I’ve taken in all the suggestions I got on Pattern Review & Artisan Square – including feedback from the Master himself – Mr Kenneth King! OMG! This is what I’ve done:

  1. Reshaped the under-bust princess seam to better match my curve. This fixed most of the loose folds I had under the bust on the front.
  2. CF waist was still a bit low, so I removed the FBA length adjustment from front. On side front this length removal tapers to nothing at the side seam.
  3. Adjusted the armscye curve. This fixed a lot of my back underarm draglines. Ironically, removing tiny bit from the side seam just below the armpit so that the side seam is straighter also removed the remaining dragline at the armpit. You’d have thought it was too tight, not too loose!
  4. CB waist was also a bit low. Making a Sway Back horizontal dart across the waistline fixed this & also helped removed the back draglines above the waist and some below the waist.
  5. The remaining draglines at the back below the waist were more difficult to get rid off. I tried all sort of combinations & I’m still not sure if it’s 100% there yet. But this good-enough-for-now fix involved letting out at the back princess seams below my high hip while taking in at the side seam from under-bust all the way down.
  6. Finally, the lopsided shoulder adjustment seem to affect the neckline & shoulder-width as well. The lower shoulder side’s neckline is closer to my neck base, so the shoulder end point is further in. I redrew the neckline & upper armscye on the higher shoulder side to match. Interestingly, most low shoulder adjustment instructions don’t mention this potential side-effect of making one shoulder more sloped than the other. But Cabrera-Meyers’ “Classic Tailoring Techniques: A Construction Guide for Men’s Wear” has a different approach to low shoulder adjustment which also fix this side effect at the same time: The whole top area roughly above the bust line on the lower shoulder side is tilted, so not only is the shoulder lowered, but the neckline and shoulder is also further to the side. Interesting that they didn’t just tell you to pad out the lower shoulder.

There still seem to be minor wrinkles. But after reading Suzanne Stern‘s 8-9/1993 Threads article on fitting a custom dress form cover, I’ve decided to stop fiddling.

She worked as première main for Jacques Fath, one of the original Paris couturiers, so should know what’s she talking about. In a series of articles she demonstrated how they’d customize a dress form to mirror clients’ figures. The dress form cover is essentially a skin-tight draped moulage.

She mentioned that even in a properly fitted moulage / muslin sloper there might still be persistent minor wrinkles that wouldn’t appear in the final garment; that the wrinkles are due to the light-weight nature of muslin, especially when not all parts of the garment are attached yet – eg sleeves, skirts; and that there’s no need to spend unnecessary time trying to pin these away.  (The articles are available on the Threads Archive DVD.)

One thing you may have noticed is that I’ve got a CF seam here and the zipper has been moved here from CB. Much easier to fix the back without that stiff separating zipper in the way. Plus much easier to zip in & out too!

Still need to transfer these changes to the patterns. I might test the modified patterns again in another muslin. Maybe I’ll use  heavier weight ticking so the result can be used for the paper tape dress form I plan to make soon. Two birds one stone – love it!