Sew Beverly

Sewing for yourself can be a lot of fun, but it can also be a challenge, especially if you don’t have a sewing buddy to help you with fittings. When I first started sewing, fitting myself was the hardest part of the process. My first solution was to use a dress form; that helped a lot! I got a form a little smaller than my body, then padded it out to reflect my measurements and shape.  It was a bit of an investment, but it really made life easier.  Then I had two babies and my body changed.  The old dress form wasn’t going to cut it anymore and I didn’t have the means to go out and buy a bigger form.  What now? I decided to make a paper tape dress form.

What is a paper tape dress form? Well, it’s a way of creating an exact mold of your body using strips of brown paper lined with water-activated adhesive. You put on an old t-shirt then get a friend to wet the strips and wrap them around your body until you look a little bit like a piñata. You let the strips dry, then cut them off and tape the form back together.  The result is a form that not only reflects your measurements, but that also totally captures your posture and figure variations! And best of all it’s cheap.  A big roll of paper tape is under $10.  I was able to make three forms from one roll.  While it does take some patience, the result is well worth the effort.

Here is a picture of a form I made recently of a woman with three grown children who is just beginning to sew for herself. Do you see how the form captures her shape? Try getting a shape that realistic from padding a typical dress form. This a very accurate representation of her figure that will make fitting so much easier.

 

Here is the form I made of my husband.  I plan to do some sewing for him, and I thought this would help. He’s very impatient and doesn’t like to stand still for fittings. Now I can just use his form and he can skip the muslin fittings!

If you want to see a video of how to make one for yourself, check out Barbara Deckert’s class “Plus Size Pattern Fitting and Design” on Craftsy.  One of the lessons is a demo of how to make a paper tape dress form.  Also, I highly recommend that class for the other lessons as well. It has a lot of good information for sewers of all sizes, not just plus size. (I am not affiliated with Craftsy and bought the class with my own money.)

Have you made a paper tape dress form?  Do you like using it?

 

 

So, my husband decided he wanted a classic pea coat. I don’t do a lot of sewing for him, but when I do, I like it to be something that he’ll get a lot of wear out of. The pea coat is such a timeless style that I figured it would be worth the effort to make for him.  I went on the hunt for a good pattern and I honestly didn’t find much. You probably already know that there aren’t many modern patterns out there for men. I did find a wonderful book of men’s coat patterns by Ryuichiro Shimazaki that seemed to hit the perfect balance between classic and modern. The only down side is that the book is in Japanese! I don’t speak a lick of Japanese, but the beautiful pictures in this book seduced me into giving it a shot anyway.

 

The book has several classic coat patterns with variations for each.  I decided to do version no. 5 of the peacoats.  The fact that the multi-size pattern is layed out differently than other patterns, has slowed me down a bit with the tracing, but I’m really excited about this project. If I can get past the Japanese Pattern learning curve, I think the result will be a very high end coat, that my husband will be proud to wear. I’ve almost finished tracing the pattern, then I’ll be ready to sew up a muslin. Stay tuned for more pictures and updates on my progress.