Motorized Carousel Dress (part 1)

Last year I had participated in a holiday dress form creation event called Fort Couture. This event celebrates the season with decorated dress forms (in place of a tree). I had built a dress of various seasonal greens for the first year but had an idea in my head I just couldn't lose! I wanted to make a Christmas carousel!

This idea began with a bunch of researching and watching Rachel Maksy's Youtube video of her moving carousel dress. Although, mine would be built to fit a dress form, instead of a person, there was a lot of 'learn as I go' throughout this process. I'll share more about this carousel build, things that worked and things that didn't work so well.

First and foremost, I needed a frame and to create it I used a pair of hula hoops. First mistake to avoid lol! The hula hoops I used were not perfectly round which would be a problem to overcome a couple of times throughout building so best to start with sturdier round frame.

hula hoop frame

Knowing weight would be a factor, I used posterboard to create the top and bottom of the carousel and created the inner edge with balsa wood. The two layers would be held together with dowels which I later changed to a plastic candy cane stick for decorative purposes. I covered the bottom (floor) of the carousel with a textured foam going for a look of snow and used a reflective posterboard on the inner top to reflect lights that would later be added.

I went to the cricut for creating the reindeer shapes out of foam. I will decorate these with some ribbon and fake holly later. Once together carousel portion itself was together it would be all about the decorations to bring it to life. But now it was time to figure out the movement and let me say, that would be a challenge.

First attempt was using the flexible curtain rod. This would be the point we'd figure out this piece was not perfectly round and to be honest, flexible curtain rod I didn't find to be so easy to make round. But there was also slack in the movement between the rod and the carousel. We than attempted to connect directly without the use of the hooks but then it was too tight to move. Next step, we added sheet metal strips to the center of the structure but again it still didn't move smoothly.

Next idea was to install a lazy susan bearing to the inner metal strip. And Tah-Dah, with the bearing we got a nice smooth movement. It still needs to hang and get motorized, and I still need to create the dress portion of the carousel. We're not anywhere near finished, but we do have movement!

To be continued ....

#carouseldress #costumecreation #movingdress