Saturday, April 7, 2012

To buy or not to buy...

Yesterday, I started thinking of some things I should probably buy soon. The biggest of these things is a dress form. I've never really wanted a dress form before because after working with the ones at the costume shop, I know my proportions don't match them very well (though, they don't match anyone very well do they?). Maybe it wouldn't really help me fit dresses and blouses, and definitely not pants, but it should help with skirts. Cutting circle skirt hems has always annoyed me because I can't keep them even. Being able to throw the skirt on a dress form would let me mark the hem with the bias stretched naturally, in theory getting a more even hem. Draping the overskirt for my Victorian costume would also be much easier. I could use it for photos of finished projects with less hassle than trying to take photos of myself. It could help with fitting and photographing commissions as well.
But...where would I put this thing? I'd need it to be accessible pretty much on a daily basis or there's no point of owning it, and I don't really have free space in my bedroom/sewing room. I guess I could move a box or two of fabric down to the basement to make space.
Probably the biggest issue - dress forms are expensive. The cheaper ones are $100 to $150. I don't really need anything more than a cheap adjustable form, but being unemployed, that's costly enough to make me hesitate. A little more and I could get a nice point-and-shoot camera instead. Though if I got some commissions that I needed it for, it would pay for itself pretty quickly.

Any thoughts anyone? Should I just go for it?

The other things I've been looking at are some patterns from Truly Victorian. I do need to make a hat to go along with my Victorian costume and I like one of the hat patterns they have. Of course then I'd need buckram and millinery wire too. If I ordered the hat pattern I might as well get a corset pattern at the same time, since I've wanted to make a corset for a while and have seen a lot of praise for theirs. I've never paid this much for patterns before, but it's not too bad, having to get the materials will be worse. I probably will go ahead and buy these sometime soon so I can make a hat in time for May 19th.

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