http://fashionbelle.com/forum/dress-form-recovering

To use linen, muslin or twill for re-covering the form, as described in previous comments, you will need to have a precise pattern to which you cut the woven fabric, and at least one seam must be stitched on the form by hand to allow for placing the fabric shell on the form. Factory-covered forms come with woven fabric coverings because the patterns are well-established and re-used many times, however creating your own from scratch could be time-consuming.

An easier and faster method for re-covering a form is to purchase a length of white rib knit fabric that comes in a tube, in as lightweight a thickness as possible. Slip the tube over the form and mark two dart-shaped seams over the shoulder area to taper the tube from the beginning of the shoulder to the top of the neck. Sew the two dart seams, trim, and place the tube over the form. The rib knit fabric will conform to the shape of the form. Hand-stitch to close the tube at the top of the neck and at the bottom of the form. The rib knit will enlarge the form slightly compared to woven fabric coverings, but the difference is not enough to be significant.

After you have re-covered the form, you can purchase about 6 yards of black soutache braid and use a curved upholstery needle to hand-stitch the braid along critical measurement lines such as the bust level, waistline, hipline (typically 8″or 9″ down from waist), center front and back, sideseams, front and back princess seams, shoulder seams, neckline and armscyes.

Wolf Forms also offers refurbishing and restoring services if you would like to hire the work done. Best wishes on your project.

I have done several plaster cast forms. The comments here are true. They are hard to cast, hard to cut off, and frequently collapse. A wrap method sounds better, though I have not tried it. Out of 4 attempts, I have two successful plaster mold forms. They are a lot of work.

Love your site, Kathleen! I bought your book years ago and it has helped in the formation of my own business. Thanks for your wonderful work.

One thing you might do if you used a store mannikin would be to use it to make a mold using plaster bandages and then use the plaster to make a papier mâché. The papier mâché makes for a more pinnable surface especially after it is covered with a bit of cotton batting and cotton or linen cover. The plaster bandage technique was covered in an issue of Threads magazine. In that article the body was covered with the plaster bandage to make a mold of the person’s body. There are some drawbacks to using this method; one is that it can get hot and two that you have to work fast or use very cold water to slow the setting of the plaster. One other method that can be used to accurately reproduce body shape is to use alginate as the mold material, though I do not know what the cost factor would be. You can find information online for using alginate to reproduce body shapes as a number of artists use it for creating sculptures. It looks like it is easy to work with. If you have been to the dentist and had an impression made of your teeth, the material used is alginate.
I went to the trouble of making a form because I wanted one that was petite and had the shape of a much smaller waist than you can purchase from any form manufacturer that I then used to design and make corsets.