#sartorialdiy-project

[sartorialdiy]

A birthday tie

With my friend Jan's birthday coming up, I had set my mind on making him a tie. In part because it's one of those things you can make where you don't have to worry about size too much. But also because I never made a tie before and it seemed about time I started working on that. 

I got some splashing blue silk for the tie, and some plain black silk for the lining. For the interfacing, I gutted an existing (stained) tie of mine and recycled the interfacing in it. I cut it down to create a somewhat slimmer model of tie (since I was sure the birthday boy would appreciate that) and hand-drafted the pattern from there.

Opening up the tie turned out to be a good idea. I had some instructions on how to make a tie from a pattern I snatched up at burdastyle.com earlier (the osman tie) but I didn't like them that much. They construct the tie with a seam running all the way around the V-shaped tip of the tie. If you look at a store-bought tie, you'll see that they don't have a seam running around the tip, rather the fabric is simply folded around the tip and there's only a small seam running from the point of the tip up along the middle of the tie.

Maybe a picture is a better idea than a long rant on the subject:  

I wanted the store-bought approach. I'm sure that if I had searched the internet I would have found instructions on how to do that, but I like to take things apart and try to figure out they were put together :)

After a few tries in muslin I figured it out and I took the plunge and sank scissors and needle into the (pricey) silk. Here's the result after completing the tips:

After that, it's just a matter of joining the pieces, sliding in the interfacing and finally slip-stitching the entire thing together along the back of the tie. This is obviously something to do by hand, and takes some time, but it's worth trying to get in right. Oh, and don't forget that little loop to run the narrow end of the tie through. And the label, if you have one, like me:

That's it, this is the tie before I wrapped it up. I don't have a picture of the birthday boy wearing him, but I might add that later.

  And should you wonder whether he was happy with it:

More (and high-res) pictures are available on the Birthday tie set on Flickr

[sartorialdiy]

DIY Dress Form - Lessons Learned [10/10]

It's not perfect, but we learned a lot

This post concludes my series on making the dress form as seen in my DIY Dress Form, for men

Here's an overview of all steps involved:

Introduction

Get wrapped in plaster

Getting out of the plaster

Creating the plaster mold

4 bis: Optional hardware

Filling the mold

Getting out of the plaster, again

Finishing your cast

7 bis: Optional joining of different parts

Cover your dress form in fabric

Finish up and show off

Lessons learned

If you embark on this project, let's try to avoid that you would make the same mistakes as I did. So here is a list of DOs and DON'Ts:

DON'T

Don't think you can do this with regular plaster you buy at the hardware store. Trust me, I tried and it was an utter failure

Don't use plaster tape that is too wide. That makes it hard to do a good gob

Don't spray too much foam in one go. Have patience and work in batches

Don't move too much when you're being plastered

Don't panic when the plaster gets a bit hot while drying, that's normal

Do not hold in your belly or pretend to be better than you are. You want a replica of you, not of some pumped up version of you. Also, you are gorgeous

DO

Do buy enough plaster bandages. Ask your pharmacist if you can bring back the unopened packages. You don't want to run out of plaster when you're half-covered

Do shave if you go naked

Do apply some moisturizing cream if you go naked

Do think about what you want your dress form to be like

Do pay attention to shoulders and neck, these are important when you are making clothes, so they are also important when making a dress form

Do make the dress form in one piece where possible. It will save you the enormous trouble of putting the pieces together

Do stand up and straighten your shoulders when getting plastered

If you insert rods, make sure to make them surface as straight as possible and in the middle of armhole/neck/leg

Conclusion I hope that this series will help you should you want to make your own dress form. I am sure it looks a bit more daunting than the duct tape versions you find online, but remember that a lot of the harder steps I did can be avoided by just making a dress for out of one piece.

If you do make your own, let me know how your dress form turned out at joost@decock.org

Finally, remember to wear protective gloves or goggles when needed and be careful when handling knifes, saws or any sort of power tools.

Also, remember that you need a good friend to do this and that brings me to my closing.

Thank you Shanley for all your help with the plastering, your good advice in all my design and sewing endeavors and for being so wonderfully energetic.

Thank you Sorcha for supporting me in all these crazy projects and for sharing your ice cream and some of your time with me.

[sartorialdiy]

DIY Dress Form - Finish up and show off [9/10]

Who wants to take me for a ride

This post is part of my series on making the dress form as seen in my DIY Dress Form, for men

Here's an overview of all steps involved:

Introduction

Get wrapped in plaster

Getting out of the plaster

Creating the plaster mold

4 bis: Optional hardware

Filling the mold

Getting out of the plaster, again

Finishing your cast

7 bis: Optional joining of different parts

Cover your dress form in fabric

Finish up and show off

Lessons learned

As you can see, this post is about finishing up and showing off.

By now your dress form will look pretty awesome. Depending on your needs or wishes you may still need to make some sort of a stand for it. I ended up buying four wheels at Ikea and I fished a piece of hardboard out of the trash at my local hardware store. I simply put the weels under it, because I wanted to be able to ride my dress form around.

I connected a new rod to the ones sticking out from the legs, and ran them in an ALU pipe so I could screw the dress form tightly to the little cart. To make it all look a bit similar I covered the cart in the same fabric as the dress form. I did not cover the pipes as I kinda like the 'metal' legs look.

Apart from that, I didn't do much else apart from putting some of my custom-made elastic on the neck and waistline. 

Congratulations, you are now the proud owner of a home-built dress form that's pretty darn cool. Get yourself a drink and figure out for once and for all whether your ass looks fat yes or no.

Actually, it takes some getting used to see yourself as other people see you. I for one always knew I had a shoulder that's a bit higher than the other but I never realized I was that asymmetrical. Also, I look fat, but I blame that on the batting.

Custom elastic at the waist

Custom elastic at the neck

[sartorialdiy]

DIY Dress Form - Cover your dress form in fabric [8/10]

Once covered in fabric, your dress form will instantly look a lot better

This post is part of my series on making the dress form as seen in my DIY Dress Form, for men

Here's an overview of all steps involved:

Introduction

Get wrapped in plaster

Getting out of the plaster

Creating the plaster mold

4 bis: Optional hardware

Filling the mold

Getting out of the plaster, again

Finishing your cast

7 bis: Optional joining of different parts

Cover your dress form in fabric

Finish up and show off

Lessons learned

As you can see, this post is about covering your dress form in fabric.

You will need

polyester (or other) batting (optional)

fabric

Finally, we are ready to cover our dress form in fabric. I have opted to apply a layer of polyester batting myself. The extra layer makes the dress form slightly larger but on the upside, it does take away the little bumps in the surface and makes your dress form look smooth and professional. Also the batting is good to stick your needles in, but I must say that the PU-foam is actually great to stick needles in, so you don't need it for that reason.

Sew together your batting and put it on the form, you may want to use double-sided tape to make sure your batting follows your concave shapes.

Once you are done with that, it's time to put on the fabric. You can choose whatever you want, but using something stretchy will make your job a lot easier because it doesn't require a perfect fit to look neat.

As you can see, I took the parts apart to put on the fabric

Sewing the batting

Batting for the legs

Fabric on the legs

Closing up the fabric at the edges

The cover at the neck and legs will also be covered with fabric (not yet in this picture)

>The cover at the neck and legs will also be covered with fabric (not yet in this picture)

The neck cover is now covered in fabric

[sartorialdiy]

DIY Dress Form - Finishing your cast [7/10]

Here's a novel way to get rid of cellulite

This post is part of my series on making the dress form as seen in my DIY Dress Form, for men

Here's an overview of all steps involved:

Introduction

Get wrapped in plaster

Getting out of the plaster

Creating the plaster mold

4 bis: Optional hardware

Filling the mold

Getting out of the plaster, again

Finishing your cast

7 bis: Optional joining of different parts

Cover your dress form in fabric

Finish up and show off

Lessons learned

As you can see, this post is about finishing your cast.

You will need

sanding paper

a knife or saw

rough file (optional)

If there are any imperfections in your foam block, now would be a good time to fix them. You'll find that the PU-foam is easy to cut, sand or file and that it's no biggie to take off extra foam that needs to go. If you are going to put some polyester batting around your dress form, you don't have to care too much about how the surface looks. If not, try to get it as smooth as possible.

Optional joining of different parts [7bis/10]

You will need

to bring your DIY A-game

If you did as I did you will have to join together the different parts now. How to do this will be very dependent on what kind of hardware you included before the filling. However, one of the hardest things is to align the different parts properly so that your body form doesn't become distorted. 

I sealed of the torso and legs with a piece of plywood. The plywood of the legs is attached to the rods that run down the legs and I put on two cylindrical guiding rods. At the bottom of the torso, there's another piece of plywood that has two holes in them that fit snugly over the guiding rods. In other words, that plywood will only fit on one precise position over the bottom part.

After careful measuring and some trial and error, I fixed the upper plywood to the torso with long screws that I put directly into the PU-foam. Now the torso only fits on the legs in one specific position (the correct one) thanks to the guiding rods.

To join the parts together, I drilled a hole in the legs plywood where the rod that runs from the neck down touches it. I then attached a nut to the bottom of the legs plywood and thus I can screw the neck-rod into the legs section, pulling both parts together, in the right place thanks to the positioning rods.

At the neck, since the surface is sloped, I made a little spacer that has one straight and one sloped side so that the bolt sits straight on the rod. I also used a plywoud cover for the neck and the bottom of the legs that I covered in the same fabric as the dress form.

Once again, this may require some DIY hocus pocus that is beyond your reach, but it's not needed to make a good quality dress form. Just make it out of one piece and you'll be fine.

This will become the cap on the end of a leg

The cap on the legs

The rod doesn't sit straight on the neck-cap

This will become the spacer for the neck rod

The spacer in place on the finished dress form

This will become a guiding rod

Preparing the guiding holes in the plywood

Those white plastic things are the guiding rods attached to the bottom part. The plywood in the front is the one that will get attached to the torso. It only fits in one specific position on the bottom thanks to the guiding rods sliding into the guiding holes.

[sartorialdiy]

DIY Dress Form - Get out of the plaster, again [6/10]

Thanks to the cling film, the torso is easy to separate from the cut-open mold. Also notice the cavity (the dark spot left from the neck)

This post is part of my series on making the dress form as seen in my DIY Dress Form, for men

Here's an overview of all steps involved:

Introduction

Get wrapped in plaster

Getting out of the plaster

Creating the plaster mold

4 bis: Optional hardware

Filling the mold

Getting out of the plaster, again

Finishing your cast

7 bis: Optional joining of different parts

Cover your dress form in fabric

Finish up and show off

Lessons learned

As you can see, this post is about getting out of the plaster, again.

You will need

a knife, scissors, saw or some electric cutting device as a Dremel to cut your dress form free

Yay for cling film You've been cutting yourself free from the plaster before, so you know the drill. You'll also learn to appreciate what an amazing thing your skin is as you'll discover that it's much easier to take you out of the plaster than to take your dress form out.

On the upside, the dress form doesn't complain when you cut too deep and you don't have to worry about not damaging the mold. Unless you want to reuse it that is.

I had only put cling film in the mold of my torso. That came out clean. In the molds of my legs and my arm, I had only applied the liquid rubber. Boy oh boy did I regret that as I had to peel of the plaster bit by bit. I hope you used cling film!

Any cavities that need fixing? When you have taken off the plaster, you may discover some cavities where the foam didn't swell properly. I had one where at the chest as you can see in the pictures. Just fill them with more PU-foam and let it dry out. Cut away the excess PU-foam when done.

Not using cling film makes it really hard to take the mold off

But even without cling film, you can get good results (with some patience)

Halfway through freeing my bottom part

Got a hole somewhere? Just cut it open and fill with more foam. Cut away the excess foam after it dries

[sartorialdiy]

DIY Dress Form - Filling the mold [5/10]

Polyurethane foam is loads of fun, but sticky

This post is part of my series on making the dress form as seen in my DIY Dress Form, for men

Here's an overview of all steps involved:

Introduction

Get wrapped in plaster

Getting out of the plaster

Creating the plaster mold

4 bis: Optional hardware

Filling the mold

Getting out of the plaster, again

Finishing your cast

4 bis: Optional joining of different parts

Cover your dress form in fabric

Finish up and show off

Lessons learned

As you can see, this post is about filling the plaster mold.

You will need

PU-foam, also called polyurethane foam or insulation foam

something to cover the floor

protective gloves

This step if fun and easy, just make sure to keep the foam from getting on your skin. Wear protective gloves and cover the floor.

As you can see from the pictures, I closed off the neck and arm holes, as well as the bottom of the legs with plywood, using the rods I installed to secure them. There's really no need to do this and you can just fill the cast without closing of any of the holes. 

PU-foam can be bought in any hardware store. You'll need a bunch of the stuff, I think I ended up using about 7 big canisters but I'm a big boy ;) One thing to keep in mind is that you have to empty the canister in one go. You can stop and start spraying but you can't wait 10 minutes or the cannister will have clogged up itself.

Work in steps I made the mistake of filling my legs completely using multiple cannisters. Don't do that, rather use up one cannister and let it dry before using the next one. If you use multiple cannisters at one, the weight of the foam pressing down will keep the foam at the bottom from expanding. And instead of a nice foam you'll end up with sticky syrup that takes ages to dry. Just empty a full canister and let it expand and dry before attacking with the next one. The foam will keep on expanding a while, so I would wait 6 hours between cannisters. But then again, I didn't so feel free to do whatever you want.

As for the neck, arm and other holes. Don't worry about them. The foam is really easy to cut or saw afterwards, so you'll just trim it off neatly once it's dry and it'll look great.

Once you're done, give it ample time to dry (at least a full day). The foam on the outside sets first, the inside may need some more time.

This stuff expands. A lot!

Also, this stuff expands

No foam but sticky syrup at the bottom of the legs caused by overfilling

To avoid this, let the foam harden out in between canisters

[sartorialdiy]

DIY Dress Form - Creating the plaster mold [4/10]

Plaster molds should be ready for filling after this step

This post is part of my series on making the dress form as seen in my DIY Dress Form, for men

Here's an overview of all steps involved:

Introduction

Get wrapped in plaster

Getting out of the plaster

Creating the plaster mold

4 bis: Optional hardware

Filling the mold

Getting out of the plaster, again

Finishing your cast

7 bis: Optional joining of different parts

Cover your dress form in fabric

Finish up and show off

Lessons learned

As you can see, this post is about creating the plaster mold.

You will need

plaster bandages

scissors to cut the bandages

water and a bowl do dip the bandages in

something to cover the floor

strong rope or electric wire to tie the cast together

cling film (plastic kitchen foil)

optional: some sort of fancy rubber that you can spray, brush or drip on

Tie up and close up Once the cast has dried, you need to put it back together and close the seams with plaster again. To hold the thing in place first tie it together with rope or electric wire. Once it stays put, apply plaster over the cuts where you can reach them and let it dry. When it's dry, remove the rope or electric wire and put plaster on the entire cut.

If you have decided to make different parts of your body into different casts, now would be a good time to join them all together so you can fill them later in one go. If you don't do that, you will have to connect the body parts later and that is way more difficult. I did it that way, but if I would do it again, I would just fill it as one block and save myself a lot of trouble.

Electric wiring is a great way to tie together your mold

As long as things stay in place that's enough. I may have overdone it a bit

You'll be applying plaster between your ties, before removing them and doing the rest of the seams

Cover the inside of the cast

We are going to fill this plaster cast with PU foam (more on that later). The problem is that the foam will stick to the plaster like there's no tomorrow. So we need some sort of intermediate layer that will separate the foam from the plaster and that will detach easily or we'll never get our dress form out of its mold.

I considered many options for this and eventually I got me Silipol, a latex rubber that you can apply with a brush and that will create a layer of rubber on the plaster surface. I had to order it online because it was impossible to find, it's very chemical stuff (make sure to do this in a ventilated area) and I found out the hard way that there is something that works much much better, costs less, is easier to apply and available in every grocery store: cling film. You know, that transparent stuff you put over the leftovers before you put them in the fridge because your girlfriend is working late again.

The kitchen foil is awesome but you have to take care to make it stick smoothly to the inside of the cast. It won't stick very well on the plaster, so this will need some special care. As I already coated the inside with the rubber, I didn't have this problem. But you won't be using the rubber so you can either make it wet or apply some non stick baking spray (I would recommend this).

Finally, you can fix the foil at the edges or even inside with tape.

This is the product I used to coat the inside. I would not recommend it

If you use it, don't use your best brush

Use this instead, good old cling film gives far better results

Optional hardware [4bis/10]

You will need

To make up your mind

Our next step will be to fill the cast with the PU-foam. If you continue without further preparation, you will end up with a block of foam that's shaped as your body. That's pretty neat and may be sufficient. If you just cut off the foam straight at the bottom you can put it on a shelf or table like that and it will be fine.

However, if you want to make a stand for it or hang it from the ceiling, you will have to plan in advance and add some hardware that will take care of that now as foam is not a very practical material to attach stuff to afterwards.

If you have different body parts that you want to join together (rather them fill them as one block) you will also have to foresee that.

I ended up putting in rods without thinking through what I would end up doing with them. But I did know that I wanted the dress form to stand up, so I added rods in the legs thinking I'd figure it out later. I also knew I wanted to join torso and legs together so I added a rod from my neck down to my middle. Finally I may one day want to attach the arm I also made (not in the final pictures), so I also added a rob between the two arms.

You will have to make your own choices. Do you want a hook at the neck so you can hang it from the ceiling? Do you want to hide the key to your Swiss bank vault in your dress form? Now is the time.

Rods going down the legs

I wasn't sure how and if I would attach the arm, so I put the rod between the arms in a cardboard tube so I can take it out or replace it after the filling

[sartorialdiy]

DIY Dress Form - Get out of the plaster [3/10]

This is me trying to cut myself loose with a steak knife

This post is part of my series on making the dress form as seen in my DIY Dress Form, for men

Here's an overview of all steps involved:

Introduction

Get wrapped in plaster

Getting out of the plaster

Creating the plaster mold

4 bis: Optional hardware

Filling the mold

Getting out of the plaster, again

Finishing your cast

7 bis: Optional joining of different parts

Cover your dress form in fabric

Finish up and show off

Lessons learned

As you can see, this post is about getting out of the plaster.

You will need

a knife, scissors, saw or some electric cutting device as a Dremel to cut you free

to be able to forgive your friend when she occasionally cuts too deep

Cuts like a knife By now the plaster will have set on you and you're probably wondering whether this was such a good idea to start with. Also, you might start to think if your friend is really such a good friend after all because you've been reduced to a rather helpless mummy. Time to open up!

You can use anything that will allow you to cut through the plaster but keep in mind that you should try to keep the cut as narrow as possible so that when you put the halves back together afterwards it still looks like you.

I found that an old fashion hand saw works well, but only for the larger and easy to reach parts. Also, you may want to stop when you're almost through the layers of plaster and switch to some more subtle tool like a knife or scissors. I have used all, and I found a steak knife to be one of the most useful. Scissors can be handy but tend to make the plaster crumble more rather than produce a clean cut.

A word on electric cutting tools By far the cleanest results will you get when you use some sort of electrical cutting too to do your bidding, or rather your cutting. I have used a Dremel myself and it's a joy. Make sure to get yourself a bunch of them very tiny dremel discs to cut with as they are very brittle and prone to break. 

Obviously there is a certain risk to cutting yourself with knives, scissors or saws too, but somehow the concept of cutting yourself with a motorized tool seems much more scary. The thruth is, it shouldn't be. The dremel uses a stiff sanding disc to do the cutting. This works wonders on the plaster as it's a very rigid and brittle material. Your skin and flesh however are no such thing and it's pretty much impossible to make a nasty cut with a tool like this. I have tried by pushing the rotating disc against my skin. It does damage your skin and you'll get a scar that will be with your for a couple of weeks, but it doesn't run deep at all. In contrast, a cut from a knife will leave almost none or a very tiny scar but will run much deeper and be much more painful.

Plaster is pretty hard so you typically have to push hard when you cut with a knife. That gets dangerous as you get closer to the skin and the last layer of plaster can give away at any moment. As a dremel requires almost no force to cut away the plaster, you won't be jamming it into your skin anyway.

Where to cut Figure out where you want to open your plaster cast. I cut open the upper body in the middle of the front (where a shirt buttons would be) and the back. For the legs I cut on the side of the leg only. That was enough to get out of them. The general rule is: only cut what's needed to release yourself.

Prepare for drying After you’ve cut your way through or wriggled yourself out of your plaster mold you have to let it dry. If you cut the plaster in two clean halves, just let them dry as they are. If you had to bend open or force the plaster in anyway, make sure to bend it back into it’s original shape before you let it dry. Fix it with some rope, electric wire or tape if needed.

Store your cast in a dry place where you can forget about it for a day.Clean up the mess you made and pay attention to disposing the left over plaster and the water you dipped the plaster bandages in. Plaster does an awesome job of clogging your pipes, so dispose of this stuff with care.

After that, have a shower and compliment yourself on a job well done. Now would also be a good time to buy that friend who helped you a drink.

After you've cut yourself loose, try to fix the plaster in it's original position before it completely dries out

Using an electric cutting tool like a Dremel produces clean and precise cuts and isn't as scary as it seems

[sartorialdiy]

DIY Dress Form - Get wrapped in plaster [2/10]

What's so funny?

This post is part of my series on making the dress form as seen in my DIY Dress Form, for men

Here's an overview of all steps involved:

Introduction

Get wrapped in plaster

Getting out of the plaster

Creating the plaster mold

4 bis: Optional hardware

Filling the mold

Getting out of the plaster, again

Finishing your cast

7 bis: Optional joining of different parts

Cover your dress form in fabric

Finish up and show off

Lessons learned

As you can see, this post is about getting wrapped in plaster.

You will need

plaster bandages

scissors to cut the bandages

water and a bowl do dip the bandages in

something to cover the floor

a friend that you trust and who is comfortable with rubbing his/her hands over the body parts you want to plaster

and don't forget to protect your body

A fully plastered torso

Prepare your body or protect yourself Before getting into the actual plastering itself, let me talk about what you should do to protect your body. First of all, this kind of plaster is made to wrap people in, so it will do no harm to your skin. However, when you try to take it off, it will try to hold on to whatever it can find. So if you have any piercings or some other jewelry, take it out. 

After that, you have two options. Either you go naked, or you wear some skintight outfit that you don't mind destroying in the process. I've tried both in the sense that I did my upper body naked and everything below the belt I did over a pair of cheap running tights that I bought at a local sports shop. Having the plaster directly on your skin gives far superior results. Not only will it be a better duplication of your shape, but the plaster will stick to the fabric if you use that. When you pull it off it will make the inside of the plaster rough and that will make it harder to take it off after you've filled it. 

If all you want is your upper body my advise is to go naked. But for the love of god: shave! Shave away any hair (or get it waxed) where you will get covered in plaster. If you don't, you'll not only be removing the plaster but you'll be waxing yourself in the process.

If you want to do more than just your upper body, I guess you'll have to wear some sort of skintight outfit. Either that or you are much braver than I am :)

This is the plaster tape I used

Plaster away I ended up using Cellona plaster tape for the plastering, but any comparable plaster tape should be just fine. I got it at my local pharmacy and it's available in different widths.

The plastering itself is actually fairly easy and it's in all honesty a rather hilarious activity, especially for that friend who is helping you ;) All you have to do is cut up the plaster into manageable sizes and dip the strips in water and apply them to your body. This can get messy so make sure to cover the floor. Relatively flat surfaces like the back are simple to do with larger strips (say strips of about 25 to 35 cm, or 10 to 14 inch). More curved surfaces (neck, shoulders and breast area) require smaller strips so you can create a little patchwork that follows all the curves smoothly.

The bottom part

Smooth as butter, fits like a glove With that, we've touched on one of the most important things about the plastering: try to make it as smooth and close to your body as possible. The plastering in itself is very easy, but you want to make sure that it the inside surface is as smooth as possible, and follows the shape of your body exactly. 

Why it should follow the shape of your body is obvious, you want your dress form to be a close copy of you don't you? Whereas bumps (convex areas) are easy to get right, pay extra attention to hollows (concave areas) such as the middle of your back where your spine runs down, or the area around your clavicles. If you just wrap the plaster around these, it will follow the shortest straight path, creating a void between the plaster and the hollow area of your body. It's important for your friend to rub the plaster to your skin so it sticks to it and follows it closely. Did I mention you need a friend who is comfortable doing that?

The rubbing of the plaster bandages also takes care of the second important thing to take into account when plastering: try to make the inside as smooth as possible. Obviously you can't see the inside until you take it off, but the plaster bandages are made up of a type of mesh covered in plaster. If you don't apply enough water, or don't rub open the plaster on the bandage, it will dry in this mesh structure and the inside will have a wafered structure. Not too bad by itself, but you'll regret not making more of an effort when it's time to separate the plaster from the filling.

Make it strong The rubbing is only important for the first layer (the one that sits next to your skin). However, you will have to apply multiple layers in order to make the cast strong enough to use later. The good news is, these additional layers only serve as reinforcement, and thus you can apply them much quicker. For one thing, the smoothness doesn't matter at all and you won't have any problems with concave areas either because the plaster will stick to the first layer without coming off again.

How many layers you need? Good question. You have to end up with something that is going to be strong enough to work on later. Yet there's no need to overdo it either as that will make it harder to get out of the plaster later. In my experience, use 3 layers for overall work, apply 4 layers at parts that are more fragile. It's also a good idea to apply an extra layer at the edges and where you plan to cut open the plaster later.

View on the back of the torso

Let it dry... a bit One you are satisfied with your work you'll have to let the plaster dry a bit before you take it off. While your friend was slaving away, you will have noticed that the first layers already started to dry and you're slowly getting more and more immobilized. The key is to wait for the plaster to dry long enough so that it keeps its shape, but don't wait too long so that it still has some flexibility. That will help you getting out of the darn thing.

In my experience, unless your friend is really quick in plastering, you hardly have to wait at all between finishing the plastering and moving on to the next step.

Back view of the bottom part

[sartorialdiy]

DIY Dress Form - Introduction [1/10]

You can do this, and better by learning form my mistakes

You may have seen this dress form before in my DIY Dress Form, for men post, but at that time I didn't include any instructions on how to make one. 

Today, let's have a look at the different steps involved in making a dress form like this. To keep things a bit organized I've split the process up in 10 steps. This is the introduction and at the end I'll do a wrap up post where I'll point out all the errors I made so you don't have to repeat them.

Here's an overview of all steps involved:

Introduction

Get wrapped in plaster

Getting out of the plaster

Creating the plaster mold

4 bis: Optional hardware

Filling the mold

Getting out of the plaster, again

Finishing your cast

7 bis: Optional joining of different parts

Cover your dress form in fabric

Finish up and show off

Wrap up and lessons learned

The pictures in all these posts are taken from these two Flickr sets:

Dress form construction

Dress form

You can go and check them out if you want to have a look at all available pictures rather than just those I included in the instructions

I have included sub-steps 4-bis and 7-bis as these are optional and I would actually advice against it, but more of that in the lessons learned post.

[sartorialdiy]

DIY Dress Form, for men

It was Carola who told me that a dress form is a huge help for all sorts of fitting issues and that I should probably get me one if I was going to be serious about this sewing stuff. Now Carola makes darn pretty things, so I wasn't going to throw her advice to the wind.

Dress forms can be bought, in all sorts of default sizes. Some of them can be adjusted between a certain range of default sizes. But here's the thing: I am many things, but default is not one of them. Neither is default sized. For one thing, I am 198cm tall (that's about 6'6) and I have a shoulder that's slightly higher than the other one. It doesn't really show, but I do notice it when wearing suits because the jacket always looks a bit asymmetric when buttoning up (because I am assymetric).

So, I wanted a dress form that would be like me, imperfect. And the only way to get that is to make one yourself. If you'd Google for how to do that, you'll find a bunch of people who explain how to make a dress form with different techniques based on either duct tape or masking tape. (I call this the dress form for women ;)

These tape-based dress forms look really good, but it's just not me to make a dress form out of tape. If I'm going to make the effort, I want to at least try and get it right. And so I set out to make a dress form that would be as close a commercial dress form as possible.

The result can be seen in the pictures. I'm rather pleased with it, but as always if I would do it again it would be better. If you want to try this at home, let me know and I'll put up detailed instructions. In the meanwhile here are more pictures:

The Flickr set of the finished dress form

The Flickr set of the work in progress

One final note

It's simply not possible to make a dress form like this (or any other dress form) without a good friend that you can trust and is comfortable with wrapping you in plaster. It's probably the hardest to find prerequisite for this project ;)

So I want to take a moment to say thank you to the wonderful Shanley, who's not just amazingly inspiring but also a super friend. Thanks Sha :)

[sartorialdiy]

More booties, on Shanley's request 

[sartorialdiy]

Bitty booties - Or how to make a nice gift for a new-born

The pictures above are from two different pair of baby-shoes I made. One for Manu, the other for Wies. They are based on the Bitty booties pattern by Heather Bailey (see link at the bottom) and are well within reach of everybody with a basic knowledge of handling a sewing machine.

I've always used felt to make these as it's very soft (have to keep them babies comfortable) and it's easy to finish and shape. The pattern comes with clear instructions, and once you've made a pair or two, you'll be able to whip these up in no time. Best of all, the parents of the little buggers tend to really appreciate when you put some time and effort into your gift. So give it a go.

Pattern: Bitty booties pattern by Heather Bailey. Available for personal and non-commercial use on her website

Pictures: From my work in this Flickr set, or much better work in the Flickr Bitty booties pool