oooh Bertha!

I forgot to tell you about Bertha!

I have wanted a dress form or tailors dummy  for ages. A few years ago I bought a great Craftsy class - Plus size pattern fitting. It is a really easy to understand class on how to adjust any pattern to fit plus sizes. I cant tell you how much I learnt doing this class. The very lovely instructor gives instructions on how to make a dress form from parcel tape. Not duct tape but Parcel tape. Like the brown stuff on Amazon parcels. This stuff, she explains is way better than duct tape as you wet it while taping it on and it dries hard.

So I ordered some brown parcel tape from eBay and was all excited to go. Except... I was trying to lose weight wasn't I, so there was no point making one now as I would be thinner soon.... And you had to stand up for over an hour, on one spot... And it was winter when I bought the tape and who wants wet soggy tape all over the kitchen floor with the dogs walking through it and the cat probably puking hairballs on it. So I put the tape away. In a very safe place. A place I would obviously remember because it was safe.

 Now summer is here and what could be more fun on a Saturday night in with the hubby than taping me up. Now Now! Not like that, thank you. Just because that's how your mind works.... To be fair once i explained to hubby what this actually meant he looked a bit dubious.  After an hour of listening to me grumble and swear as i tried and failed to find the safe place i had put the tape, to be honest he looked relieved. Then dubious again when i asked him to pop to Tesco's and buy me 4 rolls of duct tape.

Now like a good follower of Pintrest. Pinning a thing does not necessarily mean going to the website and actually  looking at the instructions or all of the comments at the end, ripping into said instructions. I kinda knew in theory that i needed to wear a long t-shirt, have a wee before we started and a glass of wine on the way. What could be simpler?

Hubby kindly started to wrap me in tape. We tried wrapping me in one long stretch of tape with me turning on the spot but the tape seemed to slope off at an angle. Hubby did try to explain that this was simply maths, with the tape skimming my ample curves and being sent off in an other trajectory but soon went quiet when i threatened to tape his mouth shut if he tried to explain maths!

We taped in silence for a while, until i put some music on and then we were fine. Except i kept dancing about, which was throwing the lines again. So i stood still. I should say that hubby is very patient. Much more than i am and always, even unwillingly, but nevertheless always, helps me when i ask him to. So he carried on taping. Point to remember for future - getting your hair caught in the tape hurts as much the sixth time it happens as much as the first.

I am not sure, that as a 'fun thing to do on a saturday night',  i had thought this through . By the time hubby got back from sourcing the tape is was early evening and i am normally in bed by 9 ish. Also we had eaten a rather huge bowl of hubbys amazing curry. (Michelle, you have to try this when you come over here.) So i was starting to feel very full and a bit tired. And it is cold under the tape. i mean down to the bone cold. Cold from the inside.  I dont know why and to be fair, judging that i was getting a little bit crabby and tired, hubby refrained from explaining it to me. The rest of me wasn't cold but the bits under the tape were like ice. And it was quite tight. Not claustrophobic, 'oh-my-god-you-have-to-get me-out-of-here-now ' but well on the way. Tighter than squeeze-'em in knickers tight!

So there i am, all squeezed in . Tired, crabby, overfull, freezing cold and rapidly losing my sense of humour and hubby announces he cant find the scissors to get me out. I am not joking. I am standing looking like some supersized inner tube and we cant cut me out. As calmly as i can i give hubby directions to the scissors but his man-looking means he cant see them, even with super precise, extremely calm, thru gritted teeth instructions. I can hear him thinking 'she has loads of scissors in her sewing room' but we've had discussions on using fabric scissors for cutting out coupons for peanut butter before and he knows better than to suggest anything now. In the end he brings in the junk box from the cupboard and i sort through and find a pair of clothes cutters Son No.2 had left here when he was training to be a paramedic - exactly where i said they were.  We ignored  teenage son No.3's suggestion we could use a Stanley knife to cut me out, and that he is now scarred for life seeing his parents being even more weird than usual.

Hubby carefully liberates me cutting up through the back while i worry that he'll cut through my good bra. I cant tell you how good it was to be sat down with a big fluffy jumper on to warm me up. Or how weird it is to see a 3D model of yourself - all curves and lumps and bumps. Actually it was not as bad as i had thought. i decided to call her Big Bertha...for obvious reasons if you've seen a picyte of me

Sadly a night sitting on the floor did nothing for Bertha...even though i had taped her up at the back she was beginning to sag a little. And as for stuffing her...if i could afford to spend £60 on stuffing I would have bought a dress form not made one. So poor Bertha sat, all sad and saggy...a little like myself .

There is a happy ending. Another Saturday nite later and searching Ebay for bargains i found a brand new plus size dress form for much less than it would cost for the stuffing.  A quick message revealed it was onlu two hours away...and you know how good my hubby is....he drove up the next next and bought it.

Bertha has not gone to waste though...she is taped around the dress form until i get around to padding it...and she was so happy to be upright again i swear she perked up a little .

And here she is !

 Hugs to you xxxxx