Mannequin Construction Ahead

Yesterday I had a great time making little mannequins out of fabric. When I thought up a quilt design featuring lots of mannequins and a dress form, it was no accident. I'd been wanting to do something using them for a long time. Mannequins are so different if you think about it. They come in all sorts of colors and can be realistic, but sometimes are very abstract and have really weird hands and necks. I like the older classic-looking ones which I guess we sort of collect here at RuBert Studios.

Russ had Maude before I met him and since then we've added to the mannequin family, Marilyn, Madeline, and Mabel who are in various states of disrepair. Their faces may look good, but you should see their arms, or lack of them. Some of these ladies we adopted during a trip through Chattanooga. We happened to have a trailer attached to our jeep to haul sculpture supplies that Russ aquiring and so had plenty of room to strap down the mannequin ladies that we found at an architectural salvage place with inspired name of Estate of Confusion.

But back to the task at hand. I wanted to show some more photos of the mannequin construction because I've been getting a lot of questions...

To assemble a mannequin with stockings on, I'm using iron-on Wonder Under to fuse the colored fabric onto the black fabric that I will cut later to make the black outlines. We've got an overlap problem, so you see I cut her arm off at the shoulder. It's okay, hair will cover that cut. You can see the backside of the hair piece with the outline transferred from the WU.

I cut everything with scissors. I used to not understand what was so great about Gingher scissors until I tried them. I thought they looked old fashioned and wouldn't be comfortable without some cushy plastic handle, but what I found is they cut through fabric as if it were butter and handles are so well made you don't need any cushy padding. So I happily used the big dressmaker shears for the last year.

Recently I added the smaller ones, I think they are called the 5" size which now I'm using for most all of my cuts except the big ones. These are wonderful also (the four inch were too small for me). They are lighter and easier on my thumb to open and close, which sounds like a trivial thing, but after cutting things for seven hours it can be a big deal. I actually asked my doctor if I had a brain tumor (did I mention I'm a hypochondriac?) before I figured out the pain in the base of my skull was due to excessive cutting, drawing, and mousing.

You can also see my little trash pail on the table. I got this idea from Rachael Ray, the 30 minute chef. She uses a trash bowl on top of her counter to keep the work area clean and the concept works very well for sewing too, especially because leaving little scraps of cut and fused fabric around on the work surface can be disastrous. You'll end with some little thing accidently ironed and stuck where you don't want it to be.

Since at this point all the fabric has fused backing, I'm working on top of the release paper wich is what holds the Wonder Under until you iron it and pull the paper off the back of fabric.

This way when I'm all done with the assemblage, I can peel it off the release paper like a hot little pancake and then play around with it until I'm ready to permanently iron it to the final project.

Here's some other photos of thing that keep me amused in the studio. From Egghead...

To Glam Girl. Oh how little things like some hair are important to us all.

And no, I'm not telling your how I put the face on her, at least not today. It's something I figured out all by my little self and some day I might, but today I've got lots of deadlines. Here's a little lingerie thing I also made yesterday. I'll probably embroidery some laces up the front. I like to leave some little things to embellish by hand for variety.