Even if you don't have room for a mannequin, you can make a support torso that is itself suspended from (or encloses) the hanger. There are several methods you can try:
1) Ethafoam covered with needle-punch batting and fabric
      Ethafoam lends itself well to this sort of thing. Take 2 or 4 inch thick blocks, cut them roughly into ovals, hot-glue the ovals together into a cylinder. Now you can carve them to the shape of the jacket. Make the shape as smooth as you can, and make it a fraction too small
for the jacket. Now take needlepunch cotton batting (you don't want the stuff with starch in it) and cover the torso. Take fabric and cover the whole thing (acetate if you want the jacket to slide right on; or unbleached, undyed cotton knit fabric; or even just pantyhose--the bonus
there is that you can stuff the legs and use them for arms.) Essentially you want a barrier between the jacket and the batting. This whole ethafoam structure can be built right around a hanger, or you can run a rod up into the bottom of it (in which case you also need to put a
square of thick mylar between two of the ethafoam blocks halfway up the torso so the rod won't work its way up through the foam over time)
2) You can also make a fabric bag that fits over the hanger and stuff it to fit the jacket, again avoiding stuffing or batting that has starch (it feels slightly rough when you squeeze the starchy kind; unfortunately it's what most fabric stores sell) .

You should consider adding arms to help support the sleeves. Stuffed tubes of fabric or pantyhose legs work. Sew them to the shoulders or use velcro.

Good luck!


Astrida Schaeffer


Drew Harrington wrote:

> Does anyone have any suggestions on the best way to hang a 70 year old
> leather hunting jacket (from an Arctic Indian tribe) from a vertical wall of
> a display case?  I want to make sure that I give it enough support so that
> it will not stretch over time and I don't think that hanging it from a
> simple hanger-like support will give it the proper support it needs.  The
> building it will be kept in also has no humidity control so I'm afraid
> that high humidity levels in the summer may cause the jacket to stretch
> excessively if not given the right support.  Any comments would be very
> helpful.
>
> Drew Harrington
>
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