I went shopping for a wedding dress with my oldest daughter a few weeks ago.  She lives in Chicago and came home for a shopping expedition.  She didn’t find anything she liked and the shop was really limited in variety as far as different styles go so now I am making her dress.

Since she’s not readily available for fittings, I made a duct tape mannequin of her shape!

It’s something I read about years ago in a Threads magazine and I’ve always wanted to try it.  This was the perfect opportunity.

She put on an old T-shirt and I wrapped her hips in plastic wrap because the shirt wasn’t long enough.  Here is the first layer:

It’s still bumpy and wrinkled which is why a second layer is needed.  This layer is added vertically to help smooth everything out.  It helped a little, but I could quite get the bust area shaped as smoothly as I wanted.  I also think I should have wrapped her tighter, but I was afraid it would be too uncomfortable and I wasn’t sure how long she would be trapped like this.

Next, I marked some horizontal lines up the back over the center back and started cutting it off from the bottom to the neck.

Then I placed it on my regular dress dummy and stuffed it a little to make it firm and stable.  Then I taped up the back to keep it closed.

It definitely needs some tweaking as far as the stuffing goes, so I have to do some more checking against her measurements. Next time I do this though, I would definitely choose a looser T-shirt to get a more definite shape in the bust area and I would wrap a little tighter.  It was a fun project though.

Since daughter was home for the whole weekend, I proceeded to make the muslin for her dress.  I made the alterations that were needed and checked them on daughter, then on the mannequin to see if it would be a good substitute.  It seems to work so far.  I’ll know more in August when she comes home again.  By then I plan to have the underdress done and only the lace work will remain unfinished.