This original dress represents a long process of designing and making. It started with constructing a dress form from raw materials.
To make the dress form, I first (with help of course) cast my torso in plastered gauze to create a shell of my torso to use as reference. I then made a simple plywood frame onto which I bound wadded newspaper with twine, building up a form that was close to the shape of my body.
I then drafted a very basic dress pattern in my size, sewed it in canvas, and put it on my own body. I next made repeated alterations to this simple body suit so that it closely and snugly fit my the contours and shape of my body. Once this body suit was fitting me like a glove, I then zipped it onto the dress form, and did the final stuffing of the form to evenly fill out the shape of the body suit.
Once the dress form was correctly shaped, I was then able to drape the pattern for this dress rather easily. Its the first clothing I've made in years, and I was delighted by how easily the task was accomplished. The process of its making was informed by the skills that I have gained through furniture making and upholstering. Tailoring fabric to a form is the same whether that form be human or furniture. Designing and planning the construction of a three dimensional object, cutting out its parts, and then joining them together is in essence the same, be the materials wood, fabric or otherwise.
