Productivity!

Since I spent the last few days focused on other projects I really needed to get something done today. Luckily I had lots of help! Irk, Smokin'Joe and the Stickmann joined my lovely wife Maya and me for the big push.

Our pile of supplies:

Note the roll of nylon and the roll of paper that will make up the marker. Along with this is the box of the lawn pumpkin that is giving its life for art... much like all of the real pumpkins that have been sacrificed to my artistic whims over the years.

First I will need to clean up and finish the marker.

Then the plan is to roll out 4 layers of fabric to reduce the number of cuts we need to make.

The fabric proved to be a bit of a hassle. The edges refused to lie flat. To remedy this I had to rough cut each piece before smoothing out the next one.

We used pins and staples along the edges to control the fabric.

Then they were handed off to Irk for finish cutting on the cutting table.

Meanwhile Joe showed the lawn ornaments who was boss.

We plan to reuse the base section of orange fabric as the actual screws that held the base together were rusted. It would just be easier to sew the new fabric to the existing bits. We will also use the zippers because there was no one to stop us! We're crazy mad like that.

Stickmann was assembling our paper reference model

and wrangling fabric and tools, which saved me from a lot of moving about.

Here you can see all of the pieces cut and ready for sewing:

Piece by piece the head was formed.

I started with the nose because I knew this would be the focus. The nose would need to have its edge defined to prevent it from looking like it got into a fight. To accomplish this we added a nose gore behind the actual nose.

Sickmann and Irk cut diamond shapes into to allow airflow but retain strength. Ultimately this piece would define the shape of the nose and eye... at least that was the idea.


At first I did the same seam twice, once for each head but for some strange reason I kept making mistakes on the second head and needed Irk to remove those seems.

Soon I decided to get one Moai finished and debugged before completing his brother.


When I finished the face I realized that I messed up on the shape for the Nose gore. Luckily Irk and Stick failed to follow my directions and somehow managed to leave me with just the right amount of space to correct my mistake. The gods were smiling on us! -or at least they would be as soon as I got these things finished.

I installed the zipper in the back seam before sewing the base to the Moai. After that was done I pulled the top thru the zipper and sewed the cap on.

It is time for the first test:

Success!

I give you Elvis!