SewLibra:
The Shop Company professional dress form. Christmas gift 2021. I've been dragging my feet to get her padded to my shape and measurements, but finally did it and thought I'd share the process.
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The Shop Company Professional Dress Form on the left and old Dritz My Double form on the right. The old one is padded with a combo of batting, fiberfill and Fabulous Fit System pads.
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I could have gone with size 10, but size 12 fit my front and back shoulders, shoulder slope, neck, and fullest part of my hip exactly. The bottom of the form (upper thigh) is 1" too large, but I don't make tight skirts/dresses at my age.
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Pin into the Shop Co. form at an angle if not padded. It has a fiberglass core with a thin layer of foam and a canvas covering. The base is a VERY heavy cast iron with locking casters. Easy to roll on a hard floor but extremely hard to lift!
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For padding I used only three pads from the Fabulous Fit System, both the covers that come with it, poly fiberfill and cotton batting.
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These are the measurements I used to pad my form. Yes, I used all of them! This was not a quickie job at all.
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This is my third time padding a form and I always use a bra. My bust with bra is 42" and the form is 38". Since I also needed to enlarge the upper bust I started with a layer of batting, then stuffed the bra with fiberfill.
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Once I got the bust to the right measurement I cut circles of batting as a cover and to add stability. On my old form the Fabulous Fit bust pads + filler were used but I couldn't get it to work on this one. She has a bigger bust than the Dritz form.
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Still needed a little more to get the upper bust right so I added a strip of batting all around. I've gained an inch there, an inch at the bust, and a ton in the waist since 10 years ago when I padded the Dritz. Ugh.
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I pulled the silky inner cover of the Fabulous Fit System over the bust to again check the measurements. Wow, those look almost like real boobs! LOL.
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Up with the covers so I can work on the rest. Last time I used one FF pad for the belly, this time three! I could have used one or two + batting and fiberfill, but this actually took on the correct shape for me. These pad are super pinnable by the way.
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To keep things in place I used fine pins with tiny heads. If I had pins with no heads I would have used them, as I ended up leaving them in. When you pull the outer cover over your padding it's really hard to keep it in place otherwise.
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Next I marked my waistline (yeah right, haha) all around so I could start on the upper hip. Had lowered the bust and now needed to raise the waistline and hip. I'm 5'3" and short-waisted.
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I pinned on a ribbon as a marking for starting my high hip. A piece of batting was placed on the back so I could stuff underneath it with fiberfill if need be.
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I should have cut this folded piece longer, but I started by stuffing fiber fill on each side until I got the hip measurement at 39". Beware when the tight outer cover goes on it tends to smash down the padding unless you use FF hip pads.
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Stuffing some fiberfill around the abdomen pads to fill it in smoothly. The Fabulous Fit upper hip pads were too curved for my body so I used a lot of fiberfill. Btw, you can use any pad anywhere no matter the name of it.
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Had to add a longer piece of batting and continued to stuff, measure, look side by side, front and back, beside the form in the mirror, until it looked and measured right.
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This is mostly for aesthetics, but I added one more piece of batting to ensure a smoother fit under the two covers.
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Under bust 34". Check. I forgot a pic of upper bust but it was correct as well at 39". I was always an inverted triangle body shape. Now I'm an inverted apple mixture. Sigh...
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All the measurements are good so I'm just trimming the front to curve over the abdomen pads.
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I pinned a dart at each side and used an air erasable pen to mark the fold inside each dart. This is just my thing, nobody really has to do this, but you'll see how much neater it is in the end.
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Overlapped the cut dart and pinned in place at the bottom. This is will keep wrinkles from forming on the batting and showing through the covers. Clever, eh? Haha.
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I have a flat back and my butt is very close to what the form has. The difference is the fat in my behind is now in the bottom instead of rounded. Close enough so I left it.
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Thought I was done so put the inner cover on. I discovered I had too much batting in my lower back so I cut some out, leaving the hip area that curves around toward the back. This worked!
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Here is the back with the inner cover on. The outer cover will hide most, but not all of the edges of the batting.
