This is a fourth part in a series of posts: Comparing close fitting slopers: Bunka vs. Aldrich

Adjusting the dress form…

I have been thinking bout getting a dressform for a while, but have not been doing too much sewing (clothing) to justify the purchase. But now, with this little project and another one in the works (later about that) I really needed it. Fast. I would have preferred Singer but Dritz seemed to be very similar, and it was available fast and with a good discount, so Dritz it was.
It took some time to adjust it to my liking, I ran into some problems, and I still feel I have some unanswered questions. It’s not perfect but it’s good enough.
First issue was the neck. As a reminder, I made the slopers to fit Burda size 38, so I wanted to adjust the form (let’s call her Greta from now on) to the same size. The neck out of the box is 34 cm and I needed 36 cm. The instruction say to adjust (see picture) at the knob marked A, and if you do measure at that position, it indeed it 36 cm (after adjusting). However, the neck measurement should be taken at B, right? Well, if you measure there, it is more than 36 cm. Actually, even if you leave the A position at 34 cm, and measure at B it is still more than 36 cm. So the neck is too big no matter what you do.
Second… the bust measure was 88 cm, however, the back width is supposed to be 35.5 cm. But how do you really measure the back width? And the front width? Is it F and E (back and front)? Or is it G and D (back and front)? I looked at all the books I have, but I am still not sure. The books either have illustrations or pictures of real bodies or mannequins with the measurements drawn in… but all of these looked different than my Greta. I looked at some professional dressforms, and they have a different shape too. What I am referring to here, is the the little arm part sticking out (see the picture). The professional forms do not have that (the ones that I saw) – the side line goes all the way to the tip of the shoulder in a continuous line. So, are these (on my Greta) really arms or is that still the back/front? I measures the shoulder © and it is the exact length as it should be, so maybe back should really be measured at G and not F. I am still not sure about this… but I assumed that G is the right measurement and went with that. If I took F to be back width, there would be no way I could get it to be 35.5 cm and still have the bust at 88cm. Maybe it would even be impossible on this size form. Even at G I couldn’t quite get to 35.5, it is just shy of 35 cm. That’s as good as it gets here…
And third… I could not get the bust point to be at 27 cm. No way. The bust point as is, on Greta, is at 25 cm. That’s almost an inch difference. So according to Burda, the bust should either be bigger cup size or lower – to maintain the front length! I tried a few different combinations, but could not really get all dimensions to fit. With the bigger cup size – I had to make the back smaller to maintain 88 cm bust. Similar with lower bust. So I decided to leave Greta as is, and assume that the bust point will not matter so much. Especially as I am not really interested in making corsets – for anything looser, I would imagine the bust point is not that crucial (darts are never sewn as on the sloper, they are always shortened to make a smoother silhouette).

If you have any comments/suggestions here I will be very happy to hear from you…