Meet Manica- The New Woman in the House

So did anyone have any idea what all that duct tape was for last week? If you checked me out on Pinterest you probably figured it out, drum roll please....A duct tape dress form. I have been wanting a dress form, even more so now that I am doing a lot of clothing. However it costs $94+++ dollars to buy one, and then Iv been told even with adjustable ones they are not exact to your body shape and hard to fit still. So,I took the plunge and tried to do what I could trying out the duct tape dress form,I figured the worst I could do was spend 30 some bucks and have it not turn out-better than 94 bucks on something that may not work well either.My husband was nice enough to wrap me up;-). We had about 2 1/2-3 layers of tape, ending with the pretty pink with white polka dots-because I love pink,and so happen to have polka dots in my craft room. I got my inspiration from various sites, a few listed at the bottom this post.

I am helping my sister in law make the same pink skirt(and green skirt I made the other week)tonight, here she is whipping together a brown one,using a serger for the first time..

Overall the dress form went as planned,we had to cut the arm a bit to get it off because we wrapped too tight(hence my hand turning a bit purple)and we just tapped it back up,Filled it with newspaper and plastic bags,then used expandable foam for what we could not reach,any gaps. It got a bit loose in the stomach area, and you want to be careful with the expandable foam that it does not blow it out a bit-leaving you with incorrect measurements. I pushed the stomach area in a bit, hence the 6 pack looking bumps-but i measured myself and the form- it is almost spot on-awesome!

With the extra material from my pink skirt, I made myself a scarf in about 5 minutes.

Blogger is acting up- again, So here is the links in raw form:

My inspiration-adding the arm:
http://craftlog.org/craftlog/?p=2699

Threads magazine instruction article:
http://www.threadsmagazine.com/item/3659/clone-yourself-a-fitting-assistant

Tips if your making a dress form:

-Read up on several different sites and most importantly,read comments, some of my best sewing ideas/alterations come from comments, other people did the work and messed up and redid- id rather learn from their mistake than my own.

-Definitely do the 3 rounds of tape-no less.

-If you want to do a "pretty duct tape", use regular boring grey on first 2 rounds-there is less than half the yards on the pretty ones-save money.

- Have good posture while standing

-wrap chest area in very small strips(you can read about why on various sites-or use your brain)

-Do not wear bulky pants like me- wear leggings or thin topped pants.

Thanks for Reading! If you have any questions, feel free to comment!
Oh, if you are wondering on the name,I was uploading the pictures from my phone(yes,camera difficulties as well as blogger-sorry for the quality!)and started to type in mannequin but spelled it wrong and then as it showed up on my email, I thought-what a great name for "her".

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