Body Doubles

Have you met my friend, Ruby?

Here she is, dressed in a fine me-made outfit:

Simplicity 8058 Skirt, New Look 6330 top, and Muse “Jenna” Cardigan

She’s a cheap imitation of me, but I don’t mind. (I assume she doesn’t either.)

Recently, though, I have been looking at these “body double” types of dressforms, and I have started to wonder if it’s worth the investment.

While I enjoy using Ruby to hold projects in progress or finished, I don’t really use her to tailor garments to fit me. While I have adjusted her dials to approximate my size at the neck, bust, waist and hips, as well as my height, she’s not really the same. My bust isn’t that high, for one thing, and hasn’t been since I was 25. For another, I am not symmetrical. Nor am I all smooth and fatless.

I wondered if I could adapt Ruby to mimic me a bit more accurately. I started by double-checking that all the dials were the right size. The neck, bust and waist were all fine, but the hips were too small, even on the widest setting. I scrounged through my scraps and found a few long, narrow pieces of leftover jersey that I could wind around Ruby’s hips a few times to approximate my hips. Here’s a side view of Ruby’s spare tire.

I also used twill tape to mark the widest point of the back and the bustline, for reference later. Mark these lines with something with enough dimension that you can feel them under a garment, and make sure they run parallel with the floor.

Next it was time to tackle my shoulders. One is quite a bit lower than the other. I can’t lower a shoulder on Ruby, but I can raise a shoulder. I hoped this would have a similar effect. I used two shoulder pads I’d cut out of an old RTW sweater and pinned them in place.

Finally, I covered the whole thing with an old tank top.

Ruby is now more my shape. We’ll see if this makes any difference.

Author: shoes15

I live in Connecticut, USA with my husband and my dog, in an old house outfitted with a sewing room, a garden, an orchard, and a big liquor cabinet. View all posts by shoes15