Advice

I need a new dress form.  I have one.  She is lovely.  She is about 100 years old (literally, we can roughly date her to 1910 or so), which has it's uses but has a lot of draw backs too.  The silhouette is all wrong for modern bodies and and I'm not really willing to corset her or pin into her to reshape her.  Because she is old.  I'd like to stop using her she will last longer as an antique and get a new, more adjustable, right-shaped dress form.  The adjustable thing is important as I am really trying to loose some of the weight I have gained since my car accident, and now that I'm in the post-op world that should start getting easier rather than progressively harder.  Plus I do sew for other people, in a small space, so the adjustable thing would come in handy when working for clients (so long as they fit within the size range for the form).

I've seen some forms at my local Hancock and Joann's which look like they would be ok for my current purposes priced at around $100, depending on the current sale.  I think they are made by Dritz.  Has anyone had any experience with these?  Are they a total waste of money?  They don't like like they would hold up a 45 pound houppeland terribly well on the adjustable stand, but I would think some clever use of PVC pipe would solve that problem.  I've never found an adjustable stand that *would* hold up such a gown (at least not for long), even when I had the luxury of using industrial forms.