Mannequin Accessory Display Tutorial

I am very excited to announce that my shop was approved for a judged craft show that will be taking place on the 4th of July!  It will be the 40th annual show for this event, and it draws a huge crowd.  It will be my first time working the event. You can expect me to not only share my finished booth with you all, but from now until July I will be sharing different ideas for displaying your products at craft shows.  Here is my first new display to share with you all.  I found the idea on Etsy at the lovely Hudson's Holidays Shop.  I was actually feeling sort of lazy, and messaged the shop to see if they had any mannequins to purchase, since I only saw patterns for mannequins listed in the shop.  Since they were out of stock, I decided to tackle making a mannequin myself.  I loved the final product so much I decided to make a second one.  Who knows, I might even make a third before July for my craft fair.  Would you like to know how I did it?

Materials Used:

Newspaper 

Fabric about a FAT Quarter for each mannequin

Thread

Cotton Filling

Tulle (for belts)

Floral Pins with Diamonds or Pearls (for hanging rings and bracelets on mannequin)

Dollar Store Wooden Back Scratcher (or large dowel for keeping Mannequin up right)

Dollar Store Vase (or what ever vase you prefer to use)

Glass Gems From Dollar Store (It will take about 3 bags to fill the vases I used) 

Remember your pattern will look bigger then your mannequin, Once you add a seam and stuff it with cotton it will get smaller. I drew by hand half of my mannequin pattern, then folded paper in half and cut out with scissors to ensure it was symmetrical.  If you have any trouble with this, you can purchase patterns for only $8 at the shop I mentioned above.

I cut my fabric doubled to save time.

Remember to sew together with the good sides of the fabric facing in.  You will  leave an opening at the bottom of the mannequin large enough to get your hand inside for stuffing with cotton. You might want to iron your fabric if you need too before stuffing.

The stuffing is the hardest part in my opinion since you will want to make sure your mannequin doesn't look lumpy.  Once you have it stuffed firmly, you will sew the bottom back together by hand.  As you can see in the picture, I did not sew the entire thing back together, I left about a 1 1/4 inch hole in the center bottom of the mannequin.  You do this so that you will be able to stick a large dowel or stick inside of your mannequin so that it can stand up on it's own.

Once you have your dowel or back scratcher as I used inserted into your mannequin, you will insert the rest of your dowel into your vase, and fill with glass gems to weight it down and keep dowel/scratcher vertical. 

You can add a belt with tulle if you like.

That's it!  The entire project probably took less then 2 hours to complete.

Using large floral pins you can hang your bracelets, rings, and more onto your new mannequin.

Well I hope you have been inspired today!

Thanks again to Hudson's Holidays Shop for the lovely inspiration.

If you decide to make a mannequin I would love to hear about it in a comment below.

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To see where I party check out my linky love page.