Doll-sized costumes - trial and error in miniature

It's often easier for to work out a design and fabric choices in 3D than solely through sketches, and since I wanted to play around more with the 'wedding scene dress' from my last post without spending a bunch on money on a full scale costume, I decided to make up the design in miniature.

Initially I was going to drape it on one of the half scale mannequins stocked in the university's pattern cutting room, but when I went to get one I discovered that every single tiny mannequin was already checked out by other students.  Obviously, the next logical step was to make my own.  The next couple days were filled with making a wire mesh framework and then sculpting a head and shoulders on top before crafting a stable base for it to stand on.

The mesh form may look innocent... but that stuff chewed up my hands like you would not believe.  I don't know if there's some secret to working with it of which I am unaware, but by the end of the day my hands had been bleeding in at least five different places and my fingers looked like someone had taken a teeny-tiny cheese grater to them.

Then Super-Scupley moulded on top of the mesh base, baked, and painted with acrylics.  It's been ages and ages since I last sculpted anything, and final result is not quite as I'd have desired, but the point of my making this was to be able to work with the costume and not to make a beautiful doll, so I sucked it up and went with it.

I really wanted the doll/mannequin to be stable on its own, so I didn't even bother with legs and feet and instead formed a base of more wire mesh which I then covered with muslin.  Since just getting this far had already taken almost three days, I decided that arms were also not important at the moment, and moved on to the clothing.

Unfortuntely, I didn't take pictures of today's progress but as you can see from yesterday's bodice, she is no longer naked!  More to follow...