Motorized Carousel Dress (part 2)

With the bearing in and movement happening it was on to hanging the carousel and finishing the dress portion. Then it would be the final step to add the motor and get it turning like a real carousel.

Speaking of the "real" look of the carousel, I turned to eva foam for the entire dress. With a heat gun, some manipulation and a couple singed fingertips I was able to create the look of a canopy type top to the carousel just as I had imagined it.

Carousel Dress

The canopy or tent style skirt to the dress also added space for the motor storage as we moved into the final stage. I relied heavily on my husband's mechanical & electrical knowledge as this stage knowing that adding the metal strips and bearing had also added weight and a small fan motor was not going to be powerful enough. He tried several motors even taking his own compressor apart for a motor, but nothing seemed to have enough umph to keep spinning with pressure applied (simulating weight). Suddenly it came to him what motor was powerful enough to keep pushing when pressure was applied and now my old, unused 1988 Nissan Altima is missing a window motor! Ha ha!

He was able to rig it up to where we could control the speed, all that electrical knowledge that I don't have myself. Just like that we had motorized movement. There was lots of tweaking till we got the speed close to where we wanted it without losing the umph for pushing. And the spinning, as well, took some tweaking to smooth out. We used rubber

against metal, given the chance to do it again I'd add rubber to the metal so there'd be more friction with rubber against rubber.

Carousel dress in movement

This was one of the hardest builds I've ever done and quite the learning experience along the way with lots of trial and error. But oh, so very rewarding to watch it spin!!

#carouseldress #costumecreation #movingdress