Dress Form

I would personally find one very useful. I guess its one of those things that you should try before you buy, but unfortunatley you can't try it first.......

I have a whole collection of them! I'm a professional dressmaker. I find them very useful - so long as you remember that they are NEVER a copy of your figure, just an approximation! Even if you measure and dial up the size carefully, things will fit you in a different way from the way they fit the form. Having said that, if you dial the form AND MEASURE IT to ensure it is the right size, you can be sure that if the garment fits the form, you will get it on the body! :) They are also very useful for allowing customers and others to see how things are working out, and to let you try things to fit. You can see mine in use in various projects on my web site (url below). For people of awkward or non-standard fit, you can always dial the form up to a slightly smaller size than is needed and pad it out to fit.

I have a child size one, a couple of slim adult females, a larger adult female, and a big lady, all adjustable. I'm aiming to get the teen size one and a male one at some point...

Woohoo Kate, your website is a fund of information!!! Thank you and thank you for the heads up on the dress form. I'm taking sewing classes and pattern altering classes (but they are in French, not my mother tongue) and sometimes I get so lost and fearful of screwing up a fabric I've fallen in love with! Maybe I should wait on buying the dress form until I've a little more experience under my belt.

Mellie aka Breeze :)

Many couture dressmaking terms are French anyway, so speaking the language is a help! I don't speak French, and sometimes I know what the term means, but translating it into English makes no sense! :)

If you are making something complex from expensive fabric, try making a toile first: this is a moack-up of the garment made traditionally in Calico, and fabrics that drape like the finished garment fabric. The garment is made up, all the alterations are marked and incorporated for another fitting, and when the toile fits perfectly, it is then dismantled and pressed carefully and used as the pattern for the finished product.

I should buy an adjustable dress form as soon as you start making anything more complex than a simple blouse or skirt. If your sewing class has dress forms, have a play with one when you do your latest project and see how it works for you. I use mine a lot, but other folk find them less useful. There are many different types on the market, and then the 'Duct Tape Dummy' you make yourself as a clone of your body: this last one is OK if you never gain or lose weight! If you fluctuate, an adjustable one and a set of pads to personalize the fit may be the best way to go.

I'm glad the web site is useful for you. It's a fun thing to do! :)

Kate, What brand Dress form do you have? Joy in Mich.

Um... 3 different ones!

I have an Athena one: light weight, made of expanded polystyrene. Not the most adjustable, but useful. I wouldn't buy this one, but it was re loved, and a gift.

I have 3 Adjustaforms: one in a small of the model they now call Perfect Fit (mine is over 20 years old), a full figure My Double, and a Junior. See them here:

also have a small pre-loved Helena, which may also be made by Adjustaform: mine has plastic feet, but otherwise looks much the same as the one on the site. I really need to replace the small ones (both have broken bits!), and get a petite and a medium, and a male one to complete the set.

You can buy on-line here:

Angela

This is the time of year to dress at least one up, in clothes with long sleeves so that you can stuff and join the wrists to hold a wigform with wig and a bit of makeup. A red silk scarf goes nicely in the neck of the top. A bit of dim lighting.....

One day I shall set them all up in different costumes and take pix! :)

Not hardly:

I'm not sure, Melinda. South of the border, there is Dia de los Muertos, with picnics in the graveyards and skull-shaped sugar candies. How about it, U.K. and Europe? Do you have any special activities around All Souls' Day?

Happy to oblige. Gotta love Google...

France is getting a bit more halloween minded, but as we are in the countryside there isn't much trick or treating going on. The general idea in our village is a costume parade for the children in the afternoon around the village square with shopkeepers and anyone else who wants to giving out sweets, and in the evening a meal and dance in the village hall. However last year it was all cancelled as it clashed with the local basketball teams annual diner!! So who knows about this year. All Saints day is another thing altogether, here it's a bank holiday and "the " day to take your pots of crysanthamums ( hope I spelt that the right way) to your family grave plot. The markets here are a riot of colour at this time of year with all the different sizes and colours of "unspellable" flowers for sale. Beautiful but don't buy a pot to give to your hostess she'll probably think you are wishing her dead! LOL

Claire in Montréal, France.

That's not exactly the same as what kids do here.

In Mexico on el Dia de los Reyes (Day of the Kings), January 6 (or maybe the night before, not sure) the children dress up and go from door to door begging candy. One year when DH and I were there over new years there were costumes hanging in the big markets. I was puzzled until I learned of the day of the kings bit.

Jean M.