made my own dress form

I was married this past October.  Of course I wanted to make my own dress--its something I had decided I was going to do a long long long time ago.  Long before I met my husband.
I already had a dress form; it was a vintage, well-loved, adjustable dress form that was gifted to me by my grandmother.  Unfortunately, I was having a lot of trouble using it because despite being adjustable, it could only shrink so small (in the bust, I'm sad to say).   So, obviously I had to make my own dress form (duh).
I'm pretty sure my then fiance, now husband, thought I was crazy.  I was already scheming and planning an overly complicated dress, and then I decided to make my own dress form to boot.  He might have been right about me being a little crazy.... (getting married can do that to ya).

Regardless of the state of my sanity, I searched online and discovered tutorials for duct tape dress forms.  (duct tape saves the day again!)
In short, you put on a t-shirt (one you don't care about ruining) and have someone wrap you up in duct tape.  Then you cut the duct tape off, tape it back together, and stuff it.

Being wrapped in duct tape by my Chris

We used paper towels to cover the areas

where the shirt didn't cover (neck, down the
arms and legs).  Super stylish, don't you think?

The duct tape shell (unstuffed)

However, I wanted a dress form that I could push pin into, and duct tape wouldn't do for that; it'd make the pins gooey, the pins probably wouldn't stay that well, and the dress form would probably lose structural integrity over time (though it might take a long time...).  Anyway, I decided to translate the duct tape dress form into muslin, instead.  Here's how I did it:

I drew a grid on the duct tape with a sharpie.
This would help me get the pieces back together
in the right place later on.

I then cut up the dress form into strips.  Why strips? I don't know.
That's just what I decided to do.  I also cut into any "bump", which
helped to flatten the pieces; you can see some darts above.

I used various heavy items to keep the duct tape strips in place
and flat while I traced them onto the muslin.  I also transferred the
grid lines onto the muslin.

Muslin pieces all set to go!  You can see some of my other supplies
at the back of the table: pvc piping and a connector piece.  That
comes into play later.

Muslin strips all sewn together.

I used pvc piping as the support pole. 
I wanted the dress form to have a stable core.
First I tried bubble wrap.  Yea, that didn't work.
It was light, true, and fairly stable, but then I
remembered that pins can pop bubble wrap.

So I tried spray insulation foam instead! I sprayed the foam
directly onto the support pole that would be in the center of the
dress form.

...which ended up being much too big, so I shaved
it down and tried to make it more human-shaped.

At this point, the foam core is inside and I've
started to fill out the rest of the dress form with
stuffing materials.  I carved butt cheeks from foam.

Other stuffing materials included muslin scraps, batting, polyfill
stuffing, and more green foam.

Here's how it turned out:

You can't really tell in these photos, but I also used a pvc piping connector piece just under the dress form so that it can screw off the lower half of the pvc piping (to help with storage). 
And I added a cap to the top of the pvc piping.
The base you see is the base from my vintage dress form.

Not too shabby, eh?  Although, to be honest, I'm not super happy with it because it ended up being larger than my body, so I can't use it to make patterns for myself.  Damn.  I'm wondering if the fabric stretched or if I didn't quite transfer the duct tape pieces onto the muslin precisely enough.  Or its possible that the dress form is the same size as my duct tape version, which includes a layer of t-shirt in addition to layers of tape....  Whatever the reason, for me, its not precise enough.  My plan is to make another using a different process.  I'm still working out what the process is....