Paper tape dress form - phase 1!

This post used to be a lot longer, but I deleted it and don't seem to have kept a copy. So I'm recapping now so people can replicate the sheer madness involved in this! I hope you guys know how much I'm doing for you here though as these pictures are truly horrible and they pain me considerably!

I wanted a personalised dressform. To fit me exactly. Now there are various ways of doing this, but I decided to go with the gummed paper tape approach, as this allows the form to keep its shape as the paper  sets to a rigid shape.

Now in theory this is very straightforward. You wear as few clothes as possible, wrap yourself in clingfilm so that it doesn't stick to you and then wrap wet strips of the tape around you. Once you have done a few layers you wait about half an hour until its dry and then cut it off -instant dressform!

In reality - its not quite as easy as all that! You need at least one helper to wrap you up in the tape - it's not possible to do it yourself. As you get quite restricted after a while you could also do with another helper to cut and wet the tape.

It is also completely hilarious to do! Having anyone smooth wet tape over your whole torso for an hour or so is rather intimate. You have to be very careful as well as you don't want to squash any parts as then it wont be accurate.

But it is very effective! Having said that - it is hideous, and has holes in it and you cant pin in to it. After I completed this stage I went on to some further steps to make it  better  -see my next post.

I shall leave you with some pictures of the general hilarity!