I was recently asked where I found a dress form that fits my bras. The woman asking has a small back, but larger bust and has been working with a Fabulous Fit dress form for years now and still can’t get the fit right.

This is a challenge for me too.

You can see one of my bras here on my dress form. I’m always saying my dress form, Catherine, and I are not the same size. I’m going to show you just how different we are.

Dress form STUFFED.

I never thought I’d be stuffing a bra, but I do. On a regular basis too.

Dress form naked.

Here is Catherine without one of my bras on her. I put a necklace on her because, well, I just like to do that.

Here’s a side view of her.

Catherine isn’t a sewing dress form. She’s a display form for stores. She’s very basic. You can see she’s is smaller proportioned all around. We’re the same in our shoulders and rib cage. Other than that she needs to be padded out to show how anything fits on me.

Here Catherine is wearing a bra, but no stuffing or padding at all.

Now we know what Catherine has; you can see how much I’m filling in to make the bras fit her.

Tools of the trade.

Here are the tools I use to pad Catherine and make my bras look better on her.

First, and maybe all you’ll need depending on your size, is a pair of foam cups in the same size as your bra cups.

I’ve used both foam cups I’ve purchased and ones I’ve made from Cut & Sew foam. For this use, I’d recommend purchased ones. They’re a little sturdier, and I’m wanting to fill out the cups on my bra while it’s on my dress form. They’re also rounder, so give a nice shape behind the cups.

The second tool I use is a circle of cotton Lycra filled with plastic beads. It can shape itself around the smaller breast shape on the dress form and give a little more backing behind the foam cup.

The Process

Now let me show you how this looks and changes with each step.

Here’s the bra with a foam cup only filling in the cup on our left.

That’s better than nothing, but still not as good as I’m wanting.

Next I put the circle in.

You can see both the foam cup and the circle inside that bra cup.

And here’s what it looks like with both tools inside the cup on the dress form.

That’s much better. Not perfect, but much better. Both of these tools can be moved around in the cup as well, so depending on where the wrinkles are, I can move these to fill that area of the cup out a little more.

Here are both cups filled out now.

With both the foam cup and the circle form, I help my dress form be closer in size to me and make my bras look nicer for photos.

I hope this helps!

Happy New Year & happy creating!