Puppet build step 3.0

Well, after I got the foam foundation down I decided to try my hand at dying the fleece and covering the head. This is a fairly easy process but for those who have never dyed fleece before like myself it was a bit confusing. I ordered my lite flesh-colored colored mix from Billy at SSpuppetFactory a great place to get all your puppet supplies (a little plug there for ya Billy). I added the dye pack to the water dropped in the fleece, agitated it for 30 minutes(poking it, making fun of, calling it names and so forth - haha-). When I removed the dyed fleece it was TAN?!? not light flesh color as expected. I'm thinking , great I just ruined 2+ yards of Muppet antron fleece that's now colored medium oak?!? Well, as you veterans already know, as I allowed the fleece to dry overnight, when I checked it in the morning it had lightened up considerably. And now actually looks like a light flesh color as required.

So with flesh colored fleece, not Pinocchio wood colored, I began to cover the head/neck. This went well without any hitches. Then I created a template out of old material, for covering the nose and cut that out of the fleece. Then I sewn by hand the nose pattern around the carved foam nose I had made earlier. Let me stop a minute and say here..... I'm not that sold on the seam hiding properties of this antron fleece. I'm using the Henson stitch (aka baseball stitch) but I'm not getting the results I'd expected. Even after picking out the seams as you can see in the pics, the seams are quite visible. What to do? Maybe I'm not doing something right.Would like to hear your opinion/suggestions regarding this.

After I had the nose completely covered I cut out the eye openings in the head, and an opening for the nose(I wanted the nose to sit back into the head a bit). Stitched the nose in place. I added the eyes in (temporarily) just to see what the finished head might look like. With some scrap flesh-colored fleece left over from the head pattern, I sewn two small ears and pinned them in place. I had a tongue carved out of foam I did for another puppet but never used and stuck it in there.

So, the head is pretty much completed. I need to get some darker flesh color material and create the circles around the eyes as shown in the sketch. I'm not sure how I am going to get his 5:00 shadow look in his lower jaw, still debating that. In the pic below you can see his eye placement is all jacked up, well I was going for that Marty Feldman look. His left eye will be in a fixed position, while his right eye has a wire on an axis that runs thru the center of the eye and into the foam. This will allow me to rotate that eye and have him "look" around while performing!

Check back for the next installment, building the foam body and arms....