A couple of weeks ago I wrote a post called How to Alter a Dress Form. I have had my dress form, Betty, for a few years and she was too big. As I couldn’t use she was clutter that I just don’t have the room for, so I made the decision to get her to the right side or get rid of her.

A couple of hours and 1 sharp knife later and she’s a much better fit.

What I didn’t mention however was Betty’s other problem.

Not only was she the wrong size, she kept falling over!

She had been supplied with detachable legs that bolted on but they wouldn’t stay put.

Every time somebody walked past her, she fell over.

Every time one of my boys hit her with a toy car, she fell over.

A couple of times all I did was cast a glance in Betty’s general direction and she fell over!

This was one of the reasons why I was actually favouring throwing her out. Getting her to the right size was fine, but the fact that she was too big in the top half was only part of the problem.

So once I had managed to get Betty to more or less the right size, I set about fixing the legs.

First of all I tried tightening up the bolts. Unfortunately one of them had fallen off and had possibly disappeared up the hoover. Ferreting around under the furniture yielded no results, although I did discover a quantity of Lego.

Next I tried a combination of wood glue and tightening up the bolts that had not been eaten by the hoover. That didn’t work either. The legs still moved about.

So it was time to get creative!

I needed a stand that could be attached to the bottom of stand where the legs went, that would be the right size and would not fall over.

After chewing the idea over for 10 minutes or so, I hit on the perfect solution.

A Christmas tree stand!

A Christmas tree stand is adjustable (you can’t tell exactly how thick the trunk’s going to be), would attach to the base of the stand (the bottom of Betty’s stand is similar to the trunk of a small Christmas tree) and stable (nobody wants their Christmas tree to squish their toddler or mangle their pet).

We have a fake tree so I needed to buy a stand.

If you decide to do this yourself, the Christmas Tree stand I bought was this one from Amazon.
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I attached it to Betty and it worked!

You might find it necessary to sand the bits of the dress form’s stand where the metal bits of the Christmas tree base will go to make then flatter.

If it doesn’t feel stable enough, you could fill the cavity of the Christmas tree stand with bean bags or you could make little bags and fill them with rice to weight it down.

I’m so happy I can use my dress form again. It’s the right size and it doesn’t fall over!

PS If you want to sew clothes without using a pattern, you might like my ebook!

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Having a dress form or tailors’ dummy can make making your own clothes so much easier. It’s very difficult pinning things to your back and then drawing on yourself with a pen! It’s equally difficult trying to pin a hem and check that it’s straight.

They’re not so useful if they are not the same size as you! This is when you might need to alter a dress form.

The best kind of tailors’ dummy is the adjustable sort. These are more expensive than the kind that are a fixed size. The fixed sized ones, although cheaper, can be where you can run into problems.

As have I.

My dress form, known as Betty, has never been a great match size wise and this has resulted in some slightly peculiar results.

Living in quite a small house as we do, there is no room for large items of clutter, which Betty has unfortunately become.

So there’s a choice:
Get rid of Betty (I feel bad doing this as she was a Christmas present a few years ago).
Get a new one (I already have one and there’s not space for 2, which takes me back to #1)
Fix Betty up so that clothes that fit her also fit me.

I decided to go for option #3. If it worked, I’d have a dress form that was the right size. If it not, I’d still have options 1 and 2.

Thankfully it did work, although she does still need a little bit of adjusting.

How to Alter a Dress Form

The first thing to do is take some measurements.

The measurements I took were:

Round my neck
The distance between my shoulders
Shoulders to armpit
Round my top area under the armpits
Boob area
Under boob area
Waist
Hips
Distance from waist to hips
Distance from armpit to waist

I then took Betty’s measurements.

Her top half needed to be slimmed down a bit. The rest of it was fine, although the fact that she is not squashy is still a slight problem.

How to Make a Dress Form Smaller

The cheaper dress forms are usually made of polystyrene and covered with a nylon cover. So remove the cover and find a sharp, serrated knife.

As polystyrene makes an almighty mess, I’d recommend putting a tablecloth or a sheet down first. When I did this, it got everywhere. It even stuck to the cat.

Identify the areas on the mannequin where your measurements are different. Using the knife, carefully shave bits of the dress form until the measurements correspond with your own.

Keep measuring!

When you have got those areas to the correct size, then you can grade it between those points so that the dress form’s curves are similar to your own.

Having a smaller frame than the dress form, I cut quite a bit of the underarm area and also off the back.

Obviously cutting bits of it off only works if the dress form is too big. So what do you do if it’s too small (or if you accidently cut too much off)?

How to Make a Dress Form Bigger

In order to make your dress form bigger, you will need some firm batting or wadding, an old bra and an old top, either a snug fitting t shirt or a vest top. The kind they sell in Primark is just the thing.

Identify the areas that need padding out. Start to layer up the wadding and pin it in place. Pop the t shirt onto the dress form and check the measurements. Keep going like this until you have a dress form that fits!

There’s a nice tutorial showing how to do this in more detail at Sew Country Chick.

PS If you want to sew clothes without using a pattern, you might like my ebook!

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How to stop a dress form from falling over