DIY Duct Tape Dress Form

Dress forms can be expensive, about $100.  I then stumbled upon this website and was inspired to make one of my own.  

• First step: trip to Target and buy duct tape!  At $4 a roll, I bought 4 rolls of this beautiful turquoise duct tape.  
• Second step: find an old t-shirt that you never want to wear again.  The idea is that you'll cover the shirt in duct tape and then cut the shirt off.  I chose one that was not tight, but not super loose. 
• Third step: wrap my whole body in duct tape (do about 3 layers).  I managed to do most of the front body by myself, but then had to resort to having my roommate helping me do my back and cut me out of the mummy suit.  Other blogs reported being wrapped in duct tape as being really hot (temperature-wise), and I can confirm that this is true.  It also can be hard to move-  I definitely was waddling around.
• Fourth step: have someone cut this mummy suit off of you.  They'll basically be cutting the t-shirt.  They should make sure not to cut off whatever you have underneath though.

Now it's time to stuff your body suit.  I used an entire phone book, pulling out individual pages, crumpling it up, and then stuffing it in the bodice.  I didn't expect to use the WHOLE PHONEBOOK.  See the black hands as evidence.

For the stand, I thought about buying a real stand, but instead I dug through IKEA's 'as is' section and found a curtain rod for $2 and a slab of wood for $2.  My friend helped me drill a hole in the wood to stick the pole in and then I used gorilla glue to adhere the pole into the wood.

I dug the pole into the phone book stuffing, clearing a hole.  I then put a bunch of Elmer's glue into this hole and stuck the pole in.  Then, I cut out cardboard for the bottom, the neck, and the arms.  Then, put duct tape over the cardboard to secure it.

I then put a dress on the form to make sure that it fit correctly! And woo, it does!  I debated for awhile whether or not I should keep the pretty turquoise masking tape or if I should put fabric over it.  Another one of my IKEA "as is" finds was 2 yards of this blue striped fabric for $2, probably intended for curtains.  In the end, the blue masking tape was creeping me out a little and looked a little unfinished, so I decided to add fabric to make it look a little more legit.  Plus, with fabric, there's the added benefit of being able to stick pins into my dress form.  To do the fabric part, I draped it over the bodice, and sewed up both of the sides.  The waist was too loose so then I hand sewed the edges of the waist in and sewed in the section under the bust.  And ta-dah!  A finished dress form.  I'm pretty proud :)

Normal dress form cost: $100.  Cost of my custom-fit dress form: $20

And mine has pretty stripes :)