Since Christmas I've been searching the city for a cheap dress form and haven't come up with anything under $350 yet. So today as I took a stray path on the way home and found only steeper prices, I began thinking of possible replacements. I bought a ton of great fabric last week, and summer's on the way, and I don't trust myself to eyeball the clothes I have in mind. (Renata was an option, but her more feminine parts are less developed than mine, and she moves.) There must be some other way to make that shape, I thought. Then I remembered the storker (whose art I have had the privelege of spotting downtown recently) and thought, if he can make people out of tape, then, dammit, so can I.

But the Storker uses elaborate molds and stuff, and the idea of covering myself in tape for a few hours wasn't appealing (or safe, with Renata and Harper on the loose). And my model needed to be solid. So I searched the house for building materials.

I found an old green child-sized broom behind the filing cabinet in the toy closet and a roll of packing tape in my dad's tool kit. Tweety's supply box yielded two Financial Times, and a cardboard box in the linen closet provided a tape measure. I took my measurements and set to work.

Digital camera isn't charged, but there is now a peach-colored shiny dress form leaning on a broom handle in the corner of my room wearing one of my sweaters. It's exactly my size and shape, swolen abdomen and all (maybe I shouldn't have taken my measurements just before my period), and has my posture. The breasts were the only part I couldn't really get right, but they're close enough to model any of the clothes I'm likely to make. It's lighter than any dress form you can buy and doesn't need a stand to counterbalance it. It's portable. It looks cool. And the whole thing cost me four bucks.