Hello all! This is a quick little post about how I turned an old, polyester dress into a beautiful dress form cover for my adjustable Singer form. This form was 40% off and I loved the idea that I could adjust it to be my measurements or those of someone else in the future. What I didn’t love, however, was the red color. If it had been either a burgundy or more of a fuchsia I would have loved it but unfortunately it was BRIGHT red. Since I live in a one bedroom apartment, I would have to look at it all the time, so I decided to do something about it. Time for a DIY dress form cover!
Material
I had an old polyester dress that was in no condition to donate and the fabric was nice and stretchy so I chose it as the main material. Any stretchy, knit jersey should work well for this. The skirt was nice and full, so I wasn’t worried about having enough material. I also used some embroidery floss to create the drawstring at the bottom.
Method
I used Morgan Donner’s video as a tutorial to make the cover. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iOPYhH6YHpQ&t=1637s
I made a few adjustments to her method, as I had an adjustable form which added some complexity. I’m a huge fan of Morgan and while am not ambitious enough to cast my own form, I found the latter portion of her tutorial extremely useful for this project.
Construction
Step 1
I started off the same way as Morgan, which as to simply drape the stretchy fabric over the dress form snuggly and pin it into place.
Unlike Morgan, however, I couldn’t pin precisely down the middle due to the gaps created by expanding the form.
Step 2
After I pinned the fabric to the form, I grabbed the two separate pieces of fabric and pinned them together to cover the gap in the form.
I then marked on both sides where the two pieces of fabric met. I took the fabric off the form, re-pinned them right sides together using some registration marks I added when tracing the outline, and cut out the fabric with a 1/2″ seam allowance.
Step 3
Next, I sewed the two pieces together with a zig zag stitch, leaving the neck and bottom open. Then I sewed on the neck cap piece which I had traced out with a 1/2″ seam allowance.
Step 4
I then folded the bottom edge over by 1/2″ and sewed a channel. I snipped a small whole into the channel and secured the edges with whipstitch. Lastly, I ran a homemade cord through the channel with the aid of an attached safety pin.
Done! I slipped the cover over my dress form and tightened and tied the cord at the bottom to secure the cover.
Final Thoughts
I love the fabric from the dress and this DIY dress form cover turned out beautifully. I should have used a double zig zag stitch during construction in retrospect, as it would be more durable for taking the cover on and off more often. However, I don’t plan on doing that much soon, so it isn’t a huge deal.
The big whoops I made during this project was actually the stand. It was also red and I thought I would be clever by spray-painting it black. However, I chose to do this in below freezing temperatures and did not properly prep the metal and plastic surfaces. This resulted in a black stand, but the paint was constantly chipping off and getting everywhere.
Until I can figure out how to strip the paint I made a temporary stand out of PVC pipe. I used The Circular Closet’s tutorial found here: https://www.thecircularcloset.com/blogs/dress-forms/best-pipe-stand-for-your-diy-dress-form
The only adjustment I made was to use 1/2″ pipe instead so it would fit into the opening at the bottom of the dress form. It turns out this isn’t quite enough support for the heavy dress form so I have to be careful moving it around my apartment. It will have to do until I can salvage the original stand. Anybody have any suggestions for a better DIY replacement stand or ways to remove spray paint off of plastic and metal? If so, leave a comment – I would love to hear!
