When making costumes (or any type of clothing) by oneself, a dummy is a valuable assistant. It is difficut to fit clothing properly without a second hand or body double of some sort, and human helpers can be difficut to find a 1 am when inspirations hit after a 4 hour internet surf. 'Proper' dressing dummies are expensive and unnessary for a person only making costumes for themselves. A duct tape dummy is a cheap alternative and is an exact likeness of one's body type. This tutorial is all about how to make one.

First you need duct tape - 3 or 4 rolls perhaps, it depends on how much 'surface area' it will need to cover. Secondly, you need a second pair of hands. It is possible to make a duct tape dummy by oneself (I've done it) but it is difficut, sweaty, and the fit is unlikely to be as good.

Clear an afternoon and start taping. If you wish, you can tape your own legs and lower body and just call in the human help to get your arms and upper body. Use either thin old clothes (cotton pajamas) under the tape or wear minimal clothing and use plastic wrap under the tape. Try not to tape your skin, it really hurts. And close the blinds, although perfectly logical getting caught covering oneself in duct tape is a difficult thing to explain.

Use many small pieces of tape and press gently or you will deform the natural shape of your body. Stand in a natural , netural, position After five or so layers, you can carefully cut the tape off with a blunt tipped pair of sizzors, then squeeze out of the dummy and tape it back together, carefully matching the edges. To help with this, you can take a big black marker and scribble over the tape before you cut it off, this will give refrence points to match the tape edges by.

Tape from the bottom up and stuff the legs as soon as you have taped to the hips, that way you can reach to cram it into the toes. An inexpensive filler is crumpled newspaper, but expect it to settle and sag eventually. Once you have taped and stuffed all the way to the neck, insert a strong coathanger and snug it against the inside of the shoulders. This makes hanging and moving your dummy much easier and easier on the dummy as well.

Unless I have forgotten something, that is it. You now have a lifesized body double you can use to check the fit of garmants from all angles and make hands-on adjustments without cranning to look through a mirror. And your dummy will not mind being poke and prodect and being used to store extra straight pins.

If there is some part of this process that I missed or that needs clarification, use this opportunity to let me know so I can fix it. As well, if it helped you, I'd love to know that too!

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