Custom Cardboard Dress Form

This project was born out of an extreme frustration with commercial dress forms and popular methods of making custom dress forms. Every DIY version I could find was either made out of tape or sewn from a customized fabric pattern. Both of these have the same essential problems. They don't attach easily to stands without sagging, they balloon outwards instead of holding their shape, and they're difficult to put pins in because the soft inner stuffing doesn't hold them at the angle of entry. All of these make it extremely difficult to make a well-fitting garment. So I set out to design a pinnable, stable dress form that anyone could make using only readily available materials I had on hand. This dress form is made primarily of recycled cardboard, and can be made to fit any person's exact shape. I hope you have as much fun with this as I did!

I set myself the challenge that I could only make this with stuff I already had on hand. Granted, this was made easier by the fact that I basically hoard crafting supplies. If you don't have enough cardboard, ask your local grocery or big box store and they usually have tons that they're just throwing away.

For the body: large pieces of flat cardboard and a few cans of expanding foam. The amount you need varies by your body type. For example, I'm 6'1" and weigh around 145 lbs. I used 11 large pieces of cardboard and 3 cans of foam. Stick to thicker corrugated cardboard, and try to keep it the same width.

For the base: Any long-enough rigid cylindrical object that you can attach to a base. I used a cardboard mailing tube because I already had a cheap tripod that I could just slot inside of it. I like this method because the height is adjustable. But, if you prefer, you can make it out of PVC if you already have that on hand.

For Aesthetics: A spandex dress form cover, or a sewn one, and some ribbons and pins make this look much better and keeps foam flecks off of your work. I happened to already have 2 of these covers on hand.

Tools: Serrated knife or cardboard saw, box cutter and replacement blades, and a printer or projector. If you have a laser cutter, all the better.

You will also need to use a few basic functions on the following free software programs:

1. TinkerCad: (A free web-based CAD program designed for kids and beginners.)
2. MakeHuman: (An open-source Blender-based program that lets you make a 3D model of a person with precise measurements.)
3. Any Free Paint Program (Or a pen, ruler, and some patience.) (I used Illustrator, but GIMP paint is free and great.)

The first thing you need to do is make an accurate model of yourself in MakeHuman. Don't worry, this is simpler than it sounds. Once you've installed this free program, all you need is a tape measure, a mirror, and, if possible, a friend to help measure you.

When you open the program, you'll see the home page pictured above. On the top left are sliders for various characteristics. On the bottom left are the values such as age, muscle, and racial characteristics. Fill these out, but think of this as a "roughing out" phase of model making. This just helps us start out with a jumping-off point based on the data that the MakeHuman contributors gathered about bone structure and fat distribution, etc... We'll be adding specifics later. The 2nd image is an example picture based on me.

If you have a 3D scanner, you can skip this step and scan yourself with your arms held out, you lucky duck.

For now, we're going to skip directly to the last tab at the top labelled "Measure." Here is where we'll start putting in our actual measurements. On the top right of your screen, you'll see a checklist with a list starting with neck and ending with ankle. When selected, the measurements for each can be adjusted using the sliders on the right. When you select a slider, it shows you the exact place to measure. Above is an example of what it looks like when I select "neck circumference." Use a flexible measuring tape to measure as you go down the checklist.

It may seem strange but, even if you're only making a torso dress form like I did, don't skip putting in any of these measurements. You'd be surprised how much information you can get about a person by the width of, say, their ankle, and the idea of this is to be as accurate as possible. Besides, later down the line you may want to make a leg form, or a halloween prop. Having a 3d model of yourself is endlessly useful. Also, Write down your measurements as you take them. You will have to go back and readjust them after step 3.

For this next step, you need a mirror. You're going to be visually adjusting some of the proportions like I did for the example above. Use the "Gender," "Torso," and "Arms and Legs" tabs and, just like in the last step, go down the list on the right adjusting the sliders until the model looks as much like you as possible. Take your time on this step. Once you finish with this, go back to the "Measure" tab and input your measurements again as this will have shifted some of them. This will ensure your model has the right proportions and the right measurements. Finally, check your height and general statistics on the bottom of the righthand menu to make sure nothing has gone terribly wrong. (It didn't. Yay!)

The next step is kind of a housekeeping step, so if you're a techie person and you feel confident to do this, go ahead and skip to step 5, you rebel, you.

For the uninitiated, an STL (Stereolithography file) is a kind of 3D file used by 3D printers and CAD enthusiasts. It gives the computer a 3d shape it can understand using an external layer of polygons and math. Think of it like a very thin, rigid skin made of teeny-tiny flat triangles, all connected together to make curves and angles and what have you. The more polygons, the higher the resolution. You don't need to know this. You will probably never need to know this. But you can pull that out to sound smart at parties.

Our next program, TinkerCAD, needs an STL. To get this, click on the "Export" icon. It's a little save button with an arrow, third from the right on the top. From there, select the STL option. Ignore every other setting, except the "Scale Units" where you need to select "Centimeters" unless you changed the units on your own. Hopefully you didn't or the math is about to get really un-fun. The export button is unfairly tiny, so I drew an arrow pointing to it.

TinkerCAD is going to be where we slice up the model for our cardboard template. But first, we need to prepare it by removing excess limbs and adding a hole for the base. Google TinkerCAD and make an account. Open a new 3D design space and right off the bat, we need to change some things. Go to "Settings" on the bottom left and change the units to millimeters. Then in "Snap Grid" change it to 0.1 mm. Now we can import our file.

TinkerCAD can't handle a file the full size of a human. So, we're going to scale it 10:1 (Scale to 10%) in this step. Thankfully, since we did this in centimeters, we can just import it in millimeters. A millimeter is 1/10th of a centimeter so this just does everything for us.

To lop off the limbs, we need to use what I call the "Negative Box." This, to my knowledge, isn't what it's actually called. Though, that's only because the people at TinkerCAD won't take my call. But there's a negative box and a negative cylinder and they both delete what's inside them. I've drawn an arrow to them, they're white with gray stripes. Drag and resize these negative boxes over the body model until it looks like the example photo.

Next, take whatever you're using for a base and measure the diameter in centimeters. We're going to cut a cylindrical hole for it. I used a mailing tube, but you might be building a PVC base. Then, make a negative cylinder of the same diameter, but in millimeters. No math required, just put in the same number. Put it in the middle of your model and group

You need to add one more negative cylinder. The purpose of this one is to serve as a registration mark for when you're putting tabs in the vertical pieces. This registration mark will tell us how far the tabs cut into each vertical piece. We don't need these for the horizontal piece, because the negative cylinder for the base does it already.

Make a long negative cylinder and make the diameter .05 cm. Then turn it 90 degrees so it's horizontal and move it so it intersects the middle of the negative cylinder we cut for the base. Then, from the front of the model, move it up to the widest point of the shoulders. Group the objects and repeat this process, but for the widest point of the hips.

Now you need to decide how many layers of cardboard you want. I probably went overboard. But the more layers, the better the accuracy. My layers wound up being about an inch apart. For the first layer, Go to "Export" and export an SVG. It will look like the image above.

Divide how many vertical layers you want by the height. Then you need to use the movement tool to break up the model. The vertical movement tool looks like a cone hovering over your model. Click it, and a unit box pops up. Simply type in the answer to your equation and hit enter. This will lower the model beneath the plane by that amount. Repeat until you've made all of the layers, then repeat this with the horizontal slices.

Scale this back up and print it out. I can't show a picture of this step because I used a laser cutter. You can also use a projector instead of printing, but measure the projection to make sure it's scaled right. If you're a masochist, I suppose you could trace bit-by-bit from your computer screen.

If you're adding tabs on a software program instead of drawing them by hand, skip this step and print everything after step 8.

Cut out the cardboard using your template and a box cutter. Be sure to cut away from yourself and protect your work surface.

To add the tabs, use the distance you got from the previous step. The tabs for the horizontal pieces should go from the very middle of the circle cut for the base and out to the front. The vertical pieces should have tabs that go from the middle of the registration marks we made earlier, and out to the back. This way they can be slotted together.

Whether you do this in a paint program or by hand, the best way is to make yourself a template. Make little rectangles a tiny bit wider than your cardboard and space them out the same distance as your model slices. Then you can just superimpose, (or place, if you're drawing by hand) your template over your cardboard piece and life is easy. Some pieces may get lopped off in the process. This is fine and they can be glued. But make sure you label them!

To label these, I used a sharpie to number them from 1-however many on the vertical pieces, and from A-Z on the horizontal pieces.

Once you've done this, you can slot them together. No glue is really required, but if you're worried, or if you have pieces that got cut off in the slotting process, you can use hot glue or tape to attach them. This was honestly easier than I was expecting, so don't stress! But do wear gloves since cardboard gets sharp.

I'm pretty sure you could just pack this with Poly-Fil and wrap tightly in tape, but I had spray foam, and spray foam pins beautifully.

First, slide the base into the cylindrical hole. I misplaced a few obvious pieces in the middle front, but since I knew I could carve the foam I decided not to cut them again. I "glued" the base with spray foam. Then used the rest of the can to fill in some of the holes. I only did one at first intentionally, so that I could see the cardboard "bones" when I started carving it with my serrated knife. This was a pretty intuitive process, but go slow with the carving.

The next day, I filled in the rest of the cells. After it had cured, I finished carving it and hit it with some 80-grit sandpaper to smooth it out. I checked the measurements one last time, and they were spot-on!

Cover the dress form. I added some grosgrain and pins to the form to improve the fit of the cover. Happy Crafting! I can't wait to see how you all use this!