Today I’m showing you how to give your sewing room some Holiday flair with this mini Christmas dress form project.
Dress form Christmas trees are a thing–who knew?! And while it’s super dramatic to have your dress form covered in fresh greenery, you don’t have to keep your sewing buddy occupied the whole month.
Enter the miniature dress form. Mini dress forms are great tools not just for drafting patterns on a smaller scale, but for dressing up throughout the year.
Here’s how you can sew your own dress form Christmas DIY project with a mini dress form, tinsel, some poinsettias, and a little fabric.
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Make your mini dress form a sweater
First we’re going to make our dress form a sweater. If you want to skip this step, you can get creative instead and just drape fabric over your dress form instead.
A little bodice is all you really need here. You could
But I wanted to give my girl a full on sweater. Maybe I had ugly sweaters on the brain, but mostly when I have leftover bits of good wool sweater, they must be used!
Drape and sew the sweater
Center back seam
First cut a rough rectangle from your sweater. If you can cut it from the hem, you’ll get the bonus of not having to finish the neck because of the ribbing.
With the wrong sides of the fabric together, pin out a center back seam. Shape it to your mini dress form.
Sew the center back seam with a narrow zigzag (0.5mm width, 2.5mm length), backstitching at the top of the neckline.
Trim the seam allowance down to about 1/4″ and press the seam open. You can tack the seam allowance down right at the neckline so that it’s flat.
Sew the shoulder seams
Next, drape the shoulder seams. Pinch the fabric together and use 1 pin to mark where the shoulder is.
Sew the shoulder seams with that same narrow zigzag. Backstitch at the neck edges. Trim down the seam allowances to 1/4″.
With your sweater on your mini dress form, cut away the fabric from the armhole areas.
Make sleeves
Pull the sweater off your dress form. Next, fold a piece of sweater fabric vertically. I used mine from the sleeve so I wouldn’t have to finish the sleeve hems.
Folding the armhole you just cut together, measure the length you need for the sleeve.
Use the length you just measured as the top of your sleeve cap and cut a pair of sleeves a few inches long. Use your eye here to figure out how long seems right for your dress form.
Fold the sleeves right sides together and sew the underarm seams with a 1/4″ seam allowance. Backstitch at the hems.
To finish off the sweater body, set in the sleeves and stitch them to the armholes with a 1/4″ seam allowance.
*p.s. this is the worst of it!
Hemming your little sweater
To finish off the sweater, cut off excess length past the bottom edge of your dress form’s body, leaving about 1/2″ extra.
Pin a hem into place that sits even with the dress form’s bottom. Stitch the hem into place with a narrow zigzag
Read on for how to make the skirt for your Christmas dress form!
Elizabeth Farr is the writer behind the Elizabeth Made This blog where she shares helpful sewing tips, step by step sewing tutorials and videos to help you explore your creativity through sewing. She has written sewing Eguides and patterns, been a featured teacher at Rebecca Page’s Sewing Summit and Jennifer Maker’s Holiday Maker Fest and her work has appeared in Seamwork and Altered Couture magazines. She also created a line of refashioned garments for SEWN Denver. When her sewing machine isn’t humming, she’s playing and teaching violin, and hanging around a good strategic board game with her husband and 4 kids.