Dress Form Jewelry Stand Tutorial

 

DIY Mannequin Jewelry Stand (Painting by Emily Winfield Martin aka The Black Apple)

 Hi everyone! Today I wanted to share with you a pattern and tutorial by Marie Browning which I used to make my mannequin jewelry stands. I didn't have all the 'ingredients' available to me at the time and I wanted to make it specifically usable for jewelry (hers is a pin cushion) so I made a few modifications. Here is a list of what I used:

Base: Plastic ribbon spool (5.7cm diameter)

Arms: Double-pointed knitting needles from a second hand shop (17.5cm long)

Arm Caps: Handmade polymer clay button shapes (1cm diameter)

Stand: Craft shop wooden dowel sawed to size (21.5cm length, 2cm diameter)

Stuffing: Unbleached felting wool (it looked like this when I bought it)

Body: Muslin or floral patterned cloth

Marie's Tutorial Here

Pattern Here

Here you can see my work in progress (meaning a big mess on the floor - why must I always move to the floor?). I drilled a hole for the knitting needles in the wooden dowel 3cm from the top. I then spray painted the makeshift mannequin base (spool, dowel, needle) with white enamel paint. Cutting the pattern and hand stitching was the most out-of-my-comfort-zone part but I managed to bend the cloth and thread to my will (muahaha, you are no match for me, sewing kit). After stitching the body form I turned it the right way round and stuffed it with wool. I crafted the arm caps out of polymer clay, baked, painted and glazed them. When all the parts were ready to go I put them together: I first pushed the wooden dowel through the stuffed mannequin body and added the base to the bottom. Next, I threaded the knitting needle through a hole in the stitching at the 'shoulder' (3cm from top of pole), the drilled hole in the wooden dowel and out the other side. I then used E600 glue where the cloth opens to the arms and stand to stop everything moving around. I also glued the base and arm caps in place.

As you can see, I decorated the non-paterned mannequins with peach chiffon fabric flowers.

I used a cupcake topper tutorial from Paiges of Style blog here to create the flowers. I had two shades of peach fabric and one duck-egg - I went a bit crazy with this as I thought of a hundred different uses for these little shabby chic flowers!

Chiffon Flower Puff Hair Clips

 Some similar fabric flower tutorials from other bloggers:

Love Wed Bliss: here

Wedding Bee: here

(are you guys sensing a theme? hehe)

Love Maegan: here

Some more pictures:

Floral mannequin laden with my jewelry - "Is that a Watch-Belt? Stylish."

Displaying an autumn themed bracelet I made for my Mum :)

I hope this inspires you to get creative and make your own useful display stand! As I said, I have very limited experience in stitching but the template from Marie was really helpful. If you need any more information about my own process, please go ahead and ask :) If you want to buy a finished mini mannequin for your jewelry I will be listing some on my Etsy shop soon so keep an eye out for them!