My daughter's parcel tape alter ego is finally looking fairly presentable. The smart wooden stand was made last weekend by my husband with wood that was cluttering up his shed. The base used to be part of a makeshift stool that was no longer needed, and the wooden pole was left over batten from when we had an area of roof leaded. It is now adjusted so that the torso stands at our daughter's height, and conveniently enough, the join in the stand corresponds with the position of her knees.
I managed to persuade her to part with a favourite nightdress which she still used as a top for bed. The label says age 10-11. She is 18. Somehow it had grown with her. It made an ideal cover over the parcel tape. The neck is filled in with a layer of interfacing that I know I will never use otherwise.
The back needed to be pulled in so it fitted tightly over the body. It only took a few minutes to put the new seam in down the back and then cut away the excess.
The sleeves just needed a circle of running stitches so I could pull them in at the shoulders, giving a rather gruesome view from this angle. Finally, a line of running stitches around the hem served to pull the nightdress into place at the lower edge. Perhaps now I might finally make her the dress I promised her three years ago...
... the parcel tape version, that is, wearing a blouse I made for her a couple of years ago. She wanted a sleeveless square necked dress, and I wanted to try pattern drafting. I realised that drafting a dress pattern for a first attempt might be a bit ambitious, and so she got a blouse. Also she was still growing.
Youtube is full of videos showing how to make a dress form with tape. This is the video I watched yesterday morning before my daughter and I went mad with the tape. No non-stick scissors here, boring brown tape, and no sacrificed items of clothing to cut away - I used an old pillow case with holes cut out for her head and arms and it served as a mini shift dress. This video doesn't show the dress form being stuffed, but I had already got the stuffing ready - three old pillows that I had washed before we went away on holiday and that had been left hanging in the house to dry. The filling is synthetic, so they were thoroughly dry when we came home.
Originally I thought I would take out the stuffing, but when It came to it I decided that could get dusty and messy, so I just pulled the pillows through whole. The lower half is now nice and solid, but I will have to find some more stuffing to fill out the upper part properly.
The back of the neck is in a state of collapse. I am going to have to wash an old cushion to use to fill in the empty bits. To avoid transatlantic confusion - pillows are what we sleep on, and cushions are what we chuck onto chairs.
