Recently, I decided that I wanted a sewing dummy. About 10 minutes later, I discovered that the average modern sewing dummy was far out of my price range, and made for women much skinnier than me.

So, I did what any good crafter would do: I made my own. This completely customized dress form would ultimately reveal my every little curve, and will make sewing items that fit and hang perfectly so much easier.

Cue several days of online research, including watching a multitude of YouTube videos and reading multiple websites. Everyone seemed to agree that using duct tape was a good idea, but having tried the duct tape dress form before with little success, I wanted to learn how to do it right this time.

I ultimately decided on a combination of several ways I had read about, choosing what seemed to be the strong points of many different duct tape sewing dummies and merging them into my creation.

But, like with all such attempts, my dress form began with me pulling on an old, tattered T-shirt and handing my husband a roll of duct tape.

He started by taping 18 inches of cloth to the bottom of the T-shirt, like a skirt, around my legs. In hindsight, I would suggest taking the time to stitch this cloth to the shirt itself, because duct tape does not seem to hold two layers of cloth together very well over when under the strain of stuffing and a lot of other duct tape.

Then, I held my arms out at a neutral position and stood there while layer after layer of duct tape was applied to me. It soon became a little snug inside all the duct tape, but not difficult to breathe.

My husband did my chest in a cross-hatch fashion, then applied tape vertically over the shoulders. Finally, he wrapped horizontally around my waist and to the bottom of the cloth.

The final result ended up being more like a duct tape dress, tight to my body down past my hips and starting down my legs. It captured the curves of my lower body with great precision.

He wrapped some scrap cloth around my neck and applied duct tape there as well, for about an inch up my neck, giving me an area to work for tight-necked pieces that may require collars.

My husband applied duct tape until I found it difficult to lean from side to side. The important part is to get enough duct tape on the form that it will take on the shape of the body. Too little duct tape and the T-shirt will still look like the T-shirt when you are done. Too much, and it will be difficult to cut off.

When we had finished, he used a pair of old scissors to cut the duct tape and T-shirt off of me, straight along my spine.

Ladies, when trying this, make sure the person doing the cutting remembers any undergarments that may be present my husband almost cut mine right off of me.

Once the duct tape was off of me, and I had dried the sweat off of myself, I donned another T-shirt and sat down to start working on the dress form. I added several layers of duct tape along the edges of the cut, placing the tape half-on the edge and folding it over to give the edge a nice, crisp area to work with.

I measured out one-quarter inch sections along the back, roughly the same distance in from the edge, and put a dot with a permanent marker. Then, I used an awl to punch through each dot.

When I finished, and could feel my hands again, I grabbed a really long length of store-bought yarn and threaded both ends through yarn needles.

I started at the top and worked my way down, threading the back of the sewing dummy like a really long shoelace. Some holes had not opened up very well, and I had to force the needle through. Others went through easily. All told, it took me several hours to get the back laced up just so.

The choice to lace the back instead of simply tape it shut comes from experience.

The first time I attempted to make a duct tape dress form, I attempted to simply tape the back shut, and it proved an unending source of frustration to me. It was the ultimate failure point that made me recycle the stuffing and throw the first attempt away.

I tied the bottom shut with a solid double knot, the kind you secure the shoelaces of a clumsy child with, and turned to the items I needed to work on the stand that the dress form would live on.

Join me next week to learn how I made the stand for the dress form, and to see how I got it to stay perfectly in place on the post I arranged for it.

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Gretchen Richards-Meunier is a reporter at the Parkersburg News and Sentinel. She is a fifth-generation artisan, and skilled in multiple art forms.