The time has come to retire my old duct tape* dress form. Why? Well, here’s a pic when she was new and one as she is now:

And a view of the base:

She spent a lot of time in my workroom during baking hot summer days and, really, anyone would sag in those conditions. I could re-stuff her and add some internal supports, but in the last few years my shape has changed, too. Particularly in the frontal region.

Making and using her has been really worthwhile. It’s shown me that I enjoy sewing better when working on a dress form. I enjoy pinching and pinning and getting an immediate idea of what the effect will be. It’s particularly useful when refashioning. I like designing a lot more than the actual sewing, but I don’t mind the sewing so much when I actually get a piece of clothing out of it that fits and looks good. Using a form means that happen more often than it used to.

So I decided it was worth spending some money and getting a ‘proper’ dress form. After some hunting around the internet for dress form reviews and recommendation, and some ringing around to see which shops stocked which forms, I settled on a Semco, which I bought at Spotlight:

This was the only model I found, on the internet or in shops, with a body length adjustment and at a reasonable price. Since I am long in the body I knew I’d need that feature. How long? One to two finger widths:

The next step is to make the form match my proportions. That means padding and a cover, because these sorts of forms are a very standard shape. (Pity they don’t have a bust line lowering adjustment, for us over-40s women.)

What will happen to the duct tape form? I’m tempted to keep her to display things on, but she’s a bit of an ugly duckling and I don’t have room for two forms. It might also help to cut her in half and use her as a kind of temporary mould to get the new form closer to my real shape.

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*Did you know that ‘duck’ tape was in use long before ‘duct’ tape? I assumed ‘duck’ came about because of people miss-hearing ‘duct’. Turns out the tape was originally strips of duck cloth. Later it was used to seal ducts. To confuse things, the company who made duct tape called it ‘Duck Tape’, with a little duck character on the label.