My design professor said draping on a cheap foam mannequin was a waste of time, but I found a $20 one at a thrift store in Phoenix and it completely changed how I see fabric flow.

I ignored the advice to only use professional forms and discovered that working with a basic, imperfect shape actually forced me to solve problems creatively, leading to a more dynamic final piece for my collection last semester.

3 comments

3 Comments

olivia_lopez9823d ago

Totally get that... my first sewing projects were on a thrift store dummy too, and it made me figure stuff out way more than a perfect one ever could.

wright.leo23d ago

What was the most useful thing you had to figure out on that dummy?

fionam1123d ago

Honestly, how did you get it to hold pins? Mine was so cheap the foam just ate them. I had to wrap the whole thing in a few layers of packing tape first, which was a pain but it made the surface workable. That weird fix taught me more about fabric tension than anything else, because I had to really think about how the material wanted to sit over a harder shell. Sometimes the janky tools force you to learn the rules better so you can break them later.