Measurements, Dress Forms and Patterns

There are few beginning steps we’ll be doing before we start dreaming about fabric and the final dress. We’ll start with measurements, dress forms and patterns:

Measurements:
Taking all of Bex' measurements is key to the fit of the dress. Label-Free has a great illustration they shared last year that talks about some of the things to measure.

Dress Forms:
A great video was featured on the BurdaStyle website about how dress forms are made. The Science Channel produced the video, which you can view here.
This is great, but custom dress forms are expensive! So Bex and I are planning to put together a Duct Tape Dress form. Spoonflower recently posted a great YouTube video that shows the process of putting one together.
I haven’t gone in depth on this post and podcast yet, but it’s on my list to read: http://sewforthnow.blogspot.com/2008/05/episode-28-dress-forms.html
Here’s a great example of a finished duct tape dress form.
There are more great resources out there- here’s the results of a Google Blog search that I’ve barely scratched the surface of!

Patterns:
One of the ideas Bex has is to copy a dress she already has, one with a sweet history (that I will let her share if she wants to). So that means copying something that is Ready To Wear (RTW). We know we don't want to take the dress apart, so when I read this great post on The Princess Seam about copying RTW knew it was a definite possibility. If we want to keep looking (which we will do either way- who doesn’t like to window shop?!), sites like Craftster, Burda Style, Pattern Review and big box stores like Jo-Ann’s will help us to narrow down our ideas about the final dress, too.

I know that Bex has some great tear sheets and ideas she's been gathering. Can't wait to see what she's been dreaming of!