Duct Tape Dress Form

I finally got Hubby to stick around home long enough to tape me up.  It's not pretty, and not really the shape thought it would be.  I was a little surprised to see my belly sticks out farther than I thought it did, but I also was surprised to see that my chest isn't as big as I thought it was.

Before we started this, I read countless websites and watched a lot of  YouTube videos on how to make a duct tape dummy.  I even consulted a few people who had made one before, looking for tips.  And one of the things that kept coming back to me was how hot it was going to be under all the tape.  And that made me a little nervous; but really it wasn't that bad.  We did this in the middle of January and usually keep the house fairly cool during the day.  We did 3 layers of tape and Hubby was sweating more from doing the taping.  I was comfortable.  In fact, and I know might sound weird, being taped up like that was actually kind of comforting, like a full body hug, although I wouldn't want to wear it all day.

Really the only uncomfortable part was having my arms taped.  I think he got a little to tight around my left arm because I could feel it starting to tingle towards the end.  Cutting it off was a little harry too because I was worried he'd snip me with the razor-sharp scissors, so I sucked in everything I could to give him room to maneuver the scissors.

Dress form before stuffing

Now I just need to stuff it.  Which is another thing I did a lot of research on.  Some fill theirs with polyfil, some with newspaper, some with fabric scraps.  These are fine if you're a tiny person.  It would take maybe 3 bags of polyfil for a tiny person; but tiny is something I'm not, and I figured it would take a lot of poyfil to fill to stuff mine.  Not to mention the shifting and settling after awhile.  I  even thought about expanding foam, but I wasn't sure how well that would work or where to get it.  I did find a few websites that sold the stuff, but couldn't afford to have it fail.

Then on one of my knitting boards somebody suggested using something for a solid core and then add stuffing around that to fill in the gaps.  That sounded like a great idea, but what to use?  It hit me, Styrofoam.  It's lightweight, easy to shape, and fairly cheap.  I picked up a sheet at the home improvement store for $6.  My original thought was to cut it into  4 strips and stack them on top of each other giving me a 6" block for the core.  Turns out I didn't need the whole thing.  I started by cutting the Styrofoam the width of my hips since they are the widest part of my body and rounded the tops to fit my shoulders.  I shoved 2 pieces in as far as I could and then broke up a few other pieces to fit where needed and stuffed newspaper fill in the rest and taped up bottom.  Now that it's all stuffed and closed up, I see a few spots where it could use a little more stuffing.  I'll fix that with expanding spray foam (the kind used for insulation).  I'll cut a small hole, spray the foam in and tape it over when it drys.  Walla, my very own dress form.

Stuffing the dress form with styrofoam and newspaper