Tis the season for purchasing dress clothing for your ventriloquist figures. There are only two holidays during the year when I know for sure that you will find complete suits for your figures and those are Christmas and Easter. Well right now in The stores like TJ Max, Marshalls, Kohls, Target and JC Penny you can find suits that actually have a coat and not just a vest. They all seem to sell them in size 2T through 5T which are the sizes that most of the ventriloquist figures wear.
Once you have your new suit you have to then decide if you are going to put your hand under the clothing or through same. I myself have no problem cutting through a new suit but if the apparel happens to be vintage then I won’t cut it up.
If you are going to cut, then one item you will want to get ( rob your wife’s sewing box ) , is a pinking shear. This is a scissors that cuts the cloth in little triangle shapes along the cut. This keeps the fabric from fraying. After making the cut which should be centered to the vent figures body you can then fold the fabric in and either hand bast with needle and thread or you can glue using fabric glue. This keeps the cut nice and neet. The length of the cut can be around 8″ long and if centered will give you perfect ease to the conrol stick.
Sometimes the sleeves are a bit too long and I have found that if you pull up under the arm, some of the fabric and then use a safety pin to hold it, the sleeve will look right and you need not actually cut and have to re hem the sleeve.
The length of pants are very easy to adjust as well. from the bottom rolled under and again fabric glue works really well or you can roll the waistband. It is hidden from the jacket so you won’t see the roll.
Just a few tips I have found in dressing the figures in the Ventriloquist Central Collection.
Dan
www.ventriloquistcentral.com
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Dan Willinger is a ventriloquism enthusiast and ventriloquist figure collector. He has been collecting for over 25 years. He created the Ventriloquist Central Collection. It now has over 100 ventriloquist figures and over 50 of them are Frank Marshall figures. Because of his love for the art of ventriloquism, Mr. Willinger created the website Ventriloquist Central. For more information about the website, go to: http://www.ventriloquistcentral.com
Copyright 2009 by Dan Willinger
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A slit in the jacket oftentimes gets caught by control levers and post resulting in flares and tears especially of the lining. I like a two inch horizontal cut at top just below shoulder board and a five inch horizontal cut just above bottom board, then straight line vertical cuts on sides to connect with horizontal cuts top and bottom, then stitch to line up liner with jacket, do a little hemming and hope kids don’t look in the back so much.