An Affordable Dress Form We Actually LOVE!
As a sewing teacher and owner of a sewing studio, I have a lot of students asking me to recommend dress forms for use at home. I’m often at a loss for what to tell them as the good dress forms are very expensive! And the affordable ones just aren’t worth it because the quality is so poor.
But recently a site called The Shop Company contacted me and asked if I would like to review one of their dress forms. It seemed like a good opportunity since their forms are available online and are relatively affordable. If I liked it, I would have a great recommendation for my students looking to purchase dress forms. AND the studio would get a brand new dress form out of the deal. Sign me up!
Here’s what I love about our Shop Company Dress Form:
From the get-go, it was super easy to put together. It came with clear instructions on putting the pieces together and I had it up and ready to rock in about 10 minutes.
Right away you could tell it was a good quality dress form. It felt really sturdy with it’s metal base and was very balanced as soon as I got it put together. Will be able to with stand the rough handling to 10 year old aspiring fashion designers.
The cage at the bottom helps you to get your hems level. Very handy!
The foot pedal on it makes it super easy to raise and lower the dress form depending on what you’re working on and how tall you are. Often our stitchers are shorter than usual.
She’s on wheels so moving her around the studio is a snap.
There are detachable arms that come with it. This makes it really useful for trying out different sleeve options.
There is enough padding on the dress form to be able to pin easily. You may need to pin at a side angle because you can’t do it straight in like on a higher end model, but I’ll save the $600 any day and pin at a slight angle.
This form is professional quality and has all the marks you need for draping, pattern making, and fitting: princess seams, armhole plates, side seams, neckline, waistline tape, under bust seams, etc. Extremely handy.
You can’t beat the price! The model that the Shop Company sent our studio retails on their website for about $225. Just to price comparison a bit, a much lower quality dress form (in my opinion) is the Dritz Full Figure Dress form. On Joann’s website this dress form retails for $289 and even with the 40% off coupon, it’s not even close to worth it compared to how much better this dress form from the Shop Company is.
It’s just a very good looking dress form. The quality fabric on it makes it look pretty in our studio.
I’m happy to report I have a dress form that I am happy to recommend to students looking to purchase one for themselves!