Duct Tape Dress Form

Two things to show you this week: the "colorful" duct tape dress form I made in a group class and my finished "words" quilt top.

I used to make lots of clothes, way back when I was in jr. high and high school especially when Home Ec was still an important part of the curriculum. I'd always wanted a dress form and I finally got one about 15 years ago. Dress forms are made to be shaped to fit you with wheels and cogs you turn until the measurements are the same as yours, You can also elongate or shorten upper and lower torso. But there are essential measurements that have to be padded and shaped that are much tougher to do. For instance, I've always had trouble with sleeves and I suspected my shoulder angle was the problem.

So, when a couple of my friends decided to go to a class to make personalized duct tape dress forms, I was IN! We donned an old t-shirt and started wrapping each other starting with a criss-cross and filling in with smaller, 3-inch pieces around the "round" parts, then covering all this again and yet again before slitting the whole thing up the back, taping it back together and stuffing it.

It's sort of ridiculous-looking but, can you see why I've had trouble with sleeves? First, my right shoulder is lower than my left and when I put this over my dress form at home, the edges of my shoulders were a full INCH wider than the form I'd been using all these years! My shoulders are more square too so I'll have to pad them higher on my form. Now, I can't wait to make some clothing!

I titled my 'words' quilt "Hyphen Comma Hashtag". When I went to my favorite quilt shop (Thimble Creek in Concord CA) to get opinions on how I should border and bind it, they all said I SHOULDN'T add borders, that it would take away from the 'modern' look of the quilt, that I should just bind it, as is, with one of the gray fabrics in the quilt. Well, you don't have to tell me twice not to add to a quilt, not to make it any larger so it's more difficult to quilt on my domestic machine!

I'm going to have to wait for the fabric I've chosen for the backing to come in. It's so perfect for this quilt! It's Windham fabric's "Type". What do you think?

 Go see what other creative people have on Judy's Design Wall Monday blog!