Making a full-body Miss Piggy replica (Finished!)
- Thread starter KOMakesThings
- Start date
Crazy good build!
KOMakesThings
Well-Known Member
Thank you all so much! And yes bk85 it was incredible to see Adam's reaction to my Piggy. He let out an big "WOW" when he saw her, and then we had an incredible chat about her... after many years of being so impressed by Adam's builds it feels absolutely amazing to have been able to impress him with one of mine. I'm still on cloud nine a few days later.
Alright, now that con crunch is over, I gotta get the thread up to speed with the last bits of Piggy's build! First up, I mentioned my issue with Piggy not having her full cheeks thanks to how I sewed the nose... I decided that the lack of cheek was going to bug me, so before I sewed the wig on I opened up the back seam of Piggy's head and then shoved into each cheek a little chicken cutlet shaped piece of foam to help pad things out. Since the rest of the head was already fleeced I didn't see a great way of gluing these down, so mine are held in place by the tension of the fleece, and foam loving to stick to itself. After a few days of puppeting around the con they're still holding in place even without glue.
I would've preferred to have achieved this shape purely through the foam patterning, hopefully with a bit more experimenting with the pattern I can achieve that. In the meantime this satisfied me enough that I could move onto adding the wig.
Though before adding the wig, one thing that... honestly I'm not sure it impacted the final build at all, but I figured I'd mention it just in case. I was trying to give the wig a bit more height on the forehead, as I think my Piggy is a bit lacking in forehead height compared to the real deal. So I made this little skull cap out of foam before sewing the wig on and... well it didn't seem to make any noticeable difference to the height of the forehead. But I feel like it maybe helped stabilize the ears after they were added to her head, by giving them more to squish into? Not sure, but just know that my Piggy has this random bit of foam sandwiched between the wig and her head.
I didn't get any good action shots of sewing the wig to Piggy's head, but it was also a pretty straight forward process of using either a running stitch or the ladder stitch to sew the wig on (The ladder stitch used anywhere there was a bit of mesh on the head I could easily sew into, the running stitch used everywhere else). The wig by the way, is the Arda Wig's Grace Classic, in the colour Dark Ash Blonde.
Oh, another thing maybe worth mentioning, is I regret not styling the wig before sewing it onto Piggy. I mostly wish she had a bit more 'lift' around her centre part... I thought at first I could maybe add a bit of a curl there after sewing it on, but once I did I got a bit nervous about if the steam to set the curls would affect the foam head. So I left things as is, and then added Piggy's ears.
If ya'll remember, my ears had those big lengths of wire sticking out the bottom of them... so I just stabbed them through the layers of fleece, foam, then bent the wires so that they tuck into the space between the foam of Piggy's head, and the EVA foam skull structure I made for her (After wrapping the ends of the wire with some masking tape, so they don't scratch up the softer upholstery foam. I'm not sure if this is entirely clear what I mean, so I might try drawing a little diagram when I have time tomorrow.
The EVA foam does a really good job of keeping the ears in place, while still allowing a slight bit of wiggle when I move Piggy's head.
And then with the head all done, I brushed on a bit of blush with more of that chalk pastels and Piggy herself was done! Looking at the below photo, I think I might need to add a tiny bit more pastel, the existing blush is pretty subtle in some lighting.
That's all the updates I have time for tonight, but I'll be back tomorrow to finish covering what I did for Piggy's shoes, skirt, and the stand.
KOMakesThings
Well-Known Member
So because I decided to give my Piggy a set of legs, I had to figure out how to make her some shoes. To do a bit of research I went to the thrift store and found a pair of high heels that had roughly the height I needed for my Piggy's foot arch, with the hopes I could use the heels in the final shoe. I deconstructed the heel to give me an idea of how they're made and found that in my particular set of heels anyways, there was a bit of thermoplastic used... so that gave me the idea to use Worbla in my build.
I ended up stuffing and fleecing a spare Piggy foot I had to try and give me a makeshift shoe last that I could form the worbla around. This did work well enough for what I needed, but shoe lasts are typically made out of a hard material and a stuffed foam foot is very much not that. As a result I found it kinda tricky to get the worbla as smooth as I wanted thanks to the squishiness of the foam foot. Also, I did at one point accidentally melt the fleece on my foam shoe last... so yeah, definitely not an ideal set up for cobbling. I may need to dream up some way of making a proper shoe last for Piggy if I go on to make her other outfits.
But eventually I did come up with three pieces of the shoe... the toe, heel, and the flat bit that the arch of the foot rests on. The style of heel I went with is the d'orsay heel by the way, which is a high heel where the sides of the feet are exposed. I picked it because it seemed like a classy high heel that I could see Piggy wearing... and also it meant I had slightly less shoe to make.
For the heel I was eventually able to get the original shoe heels to work for Piggy, but I ended up having to manhandle them quite a bit with a dremel to carve some gouges into the plastic, followed up by some heating/bending with my heat gun. I wasn't sure why at first the heatgun alone wasn't allowing me to bend the plastic heel, but it turns out there was a thick metal pin in there keeping it straight. You can see I used some apoxie sculpt to fill in some of the resulting gaps in the heel, which was sanded smooth after it cured.
You can see in the last pic I started covering the worbla pieces with felt, my thinking there was I wanted to try and smooth the worbla out a bit as well as make them feel a bit more finished.
Here's all the pieces of the heel, disassembled. At this point I covered the pieces with some stretchy satin fabric... fabric from some extra gloves that I had bought for Piggy, and had dyed slightly darker as I was very indecisive about what colour the gloves should be. I used fabritac glue for attaching all the fabric, Fabrictac dries super fast and has a decent hold, but you can also peel it off with enough effort which is great for those occasional screw ups.
The heel got screwed in place using screws harvested from the original shoes, screwing through the flat bit that follows the arch, sandwiching the back of the heel between the heel and that flat arch pieces. Then I used a bit of scavenged pleather as an insole to cover up the screw holes, and glued the toe piece in place.
Then I primed/painted some thin EVA form to make the outsole, and glued it to the bottom of the shoe. This foam was 2mm thick, but I added an extra layer of foam at the toe area so it was 4 mm thick there.
To be honest, these shoes aren't as clean as I would like them to be, so I would like to give this another go at some point. Aside from making a proper shoe last I don't think I'd do anything terribly different, I'd just do what I did a little bit better.
Moving onto Piggy's skirt... I had fully intended to sew a skirt from scratch. But the fabric I got for Piggy's bodice was way too stiff to make the skirt shape I wanted, and as my deadline was soon approaching I opted to cut myself some slack and modify an existing skirt. What ended up working beautifully was one of those "hi-lo" style dresses, which are short in the front and longer in the back. I lucked out and found a dress that worked perfectly for my Piggy's height, with the short side being floor length on her and the long side forming this beautiful train. I hacked off the bodice of that dress, which included a ribbon to cinch the waist, and then used the waist ribbon to make a waistband for the skirt. I do regret not adding a bit of interfacing to the ribbon to give it more structure, so maybe I'll unpick this one day and redo that.
And the last bit to share about my Piggy build (At least, the last bit I can remember needing to share) is Piggy's stand. I grabbed a wooden plaque from Michaels, some table legs from Home depot, and some knife inserts, and combining them all together I made a stand that's easy to disassemble. This worked out great for wandering the convention with Piggy, I was able to stash all the pieces in a bag and then assemble them when I needed a break from carrying her.
At the top of the table leg is a wooden door knob I had in my craft stash that I drilled holes into, then threaded a loop of elastic into (One for each leg). The elastics are held taught by drawstring closures, and loop around each of Piggy's legs. Piggy, please forgive me for showing the internet your unmentionables!
Helping to keep Piggy upright are some PVC pipes. The pipes run the height of Piggy's legs, then connect in the middle to form a spine. I intended to glue these pipes together, but they actually fit pretty snuggly even without glue, and as a bonus the pipes being left unglued means I can slightly adjust the pose and make Piggy lean forwards and backwards... veeery slightly, but hey I'll take it.
Very important part of this set up: The pool noodle, which perfectly fits onto the PVC pipe spine, and is the heavy lifter that keeps Piggy's foam neck from snapping backwards under the weight of her wig.
The very last bit that I added to help provide more stability for Piggy is this cylinder of EVA foam that I cut notches into, which fits around the PVC pipes in her legs and helps strengthen the joint area between her hips and torso. Altogether, this makes Piggy pretty well balanced. I did a photoshoot with her at the convention and was able to carry the entire stand with her on it around and even down an escalator at one point, without her losing her balance.
Annnnnnd that's it! That's my complete Piggy... or version 1 anyways. There's some tweaks I'd like to make eventually, but as mentioned previously I'm gonna take a bit of a break with Piggy to work on other projects... like redoing my Kermit, because my original Kermit feels a little lackluster standing next to Piggy. If anyone has any questions feel free to ask, I'm happy to provide more detail where I can!
I ended up stuffing and fleecing a spare Piggy foot I had to try and give me a makeshift shoe last that I could form the worbla around. This did work well enough for what I needed, but shoe lasts are typically made out of a hard material and a stuffed foam foot is very much not that. As a result I found it kinda tricky to get the worbla as smooth as I wanted thanks to the squishiness of the foam foot. Also, I did at one point accidentally melt the fleece on my foam shoe last... so yeah, definitely not an ideal set up for cobbling. I may need to dream up some way of making a proper shoe last for Piggy if I go on to make her other outfits.
But eventually I did come up with three pieces of the shoe... the toe, heel, and the flat bit that the arch of the foot rests on. The style of heel I went with is the d'orsay heel by the way, which is a high heel where the sides of the feet are exposed. I picked it because it seemed like a classy high heel that I could see Piggy wearing... and also it meant I had slightly less shoe to make.
For the heel I was eventually able to get the original shoe heels to work for Piggy, but I ended up having to manhandle them quite a bit with a dremel to carve some gouges into the plastic, followed up by some heating/bending with my heat gun. I wasn't sure why at first the heatgun alone wasn't allowing me to bend the plastic heel, but it turns out there was a thick metal pin in there keeping it straight. You can see I used some apoxie sculpt to fill in some of the resulting gaps in the heel, which was sanded smooth after it cured.
You can see in the last pic I started covering the worbla pieces with felt, my thinking there was I wanted to try and smooth the worbla out a bit as well as make them feel a bit more finished.
Here's all the pieces of the heel, disassembled. At this point I covered the pieces with some stretchy satin fabric... fabric from some extra gloves that I had bought for Piggy, and had dyed slightly darker as I was very indecisive about what colour the gloves should be. I used fabritac glue for attaching all the fabric, Fabrictac dries super fast and has a decent hold, but you can also peel it off with enough effort which is great for those occasional screw ups.
The heel got screwed in place using screws harvested from the original shoes, screwing through the flat bit that follows the arch, sandwiching the back of the heel between the heel and that flat arch pieces. Then I used a bit of scavenged pleather as an insole to cover up the screw holes, and glued the toe piece in place.
Then I primed/painted some thin EVA form to make the outsole, and glued it to the bottom of the shoe. This foam was 2mm thick, but I added an extra layer of foam at the toe area so it was 4 mm thick there.
To be honest, these shoes aren't as clean as I would like them to be, so I would like to give this another go at some point. Aside from making a proper shoe last I don't think I'd do anything terribly different, I'd just do what I did a little bit better.
Moving onto Piggy's skirt... I had fully intended to sew a skirt from scratch. But the fabric I got for Piggy's bodice was way too stiff to make the skirt shape I wanted, and as my deadline was soon approaching I opted to cut myself some slack and modify an existing skirt. What ended up working beautifully was one of those "hi-lo" style dresses, which are short in the front and longer in the back. I lucked out and found a dress that worked perfectly for my Piggy's height, with the short side being floor length on her and the long side forming this beautiful train. I hacked off the bodice of that dress, which included a ribbon to cinch the waist, and then used the waist ribbon to make a waistband for the skirt. I do regret not adding a bit of interfacing to the ribbon to give it more structure, so maybe I'll unpick this one day and redo that.
And the last bit to share about my Piggy build (At least, the last bit I can remember needing to share) is Piggy's stand. I grabbed a wooden plaque from Michaels, some table legs from Home depot, and some knife inserts, and combining them all together I made a stand that's easy to disassemble. This worked out great for wandering the convention with Piggy, I was able to stash all the pieces in a bag and then assemble them when I needed a break from carrying her.
At the top of the table leg is a wooden door knob I had in my craft stash that I drilled holes into, then threaded a loop of elastic into (One for each leg). The elastics are held taught by drawstring closures, and loop around each of Piggy's legs. Piggy, please forgive me for showing the internet your unmentionables!
Helping to keep Piggy upright are some PVC pipes. The pipes run the height of Piggy's legs, then connect in the middle to form a spine. I intended to glue these pipes together, but they actually fit pretty snuggly even without glue, and as a bonus the pipes being left unglued means I can slightly adjust the pose and make Piggy lean forwards and backwards... veeery slightly, but hey I'll take it.
The very last bit that I added to help provide more stability for Piggy is this cylinder of EVA foam that I cut notches into, which fits around the PVC pipes in her legs and helps strengthen the joint area between her hips and torso. Altogether, this makes Piggy pretty well balanced. I did a photoshoot with her at the convention and was able to carry the entire stand with her on it around and even down an escalator at one point, without her losing her balance.
Annnnnnd that's it! That's my complete Piggy... or version 1 anyways. There's some tweaks I'd like to make eventually, but as mentioned previously I'm gonna take a bit of a break with Piggy to work on other projects... like redoing my Kermit, because my original Kermit feels a little lackluster standing next to Piggy. If anyone has any questions feel free to ask, I'm happy to provide more detail where I can!
OzReturner
Sr Member
Looks fantastic! Very regal at full height with the skirt. Love it, another great job!
KOMakesThings
Well-Known Member
Thank you! I hope I have more opportunities to show all of her off, there's something really fun about being able to stand her up and kinda pretend she's real. Especially when you cover up the stand with the skirt, so it looks like she's standing up unassisted.
If possible I'd love to make a version with poseable legs one day, something for me to mull over for a future build maybe.
lenny t lizard
New Member
This is stellar work!!! Would you ever consider sharing the patterns?
KOMakesThings
Well-Known Member
Thanks! Maybe sometime in the future... there's some issues with the pattern that I had to work around when I made my Piggy, if I ever do release my patterns I'd want to make sure they make sense to someone who isn't me.
Also unrelated, but here's a few more images of my Piggy, courtesy of the photographer I hired at the convention:
Attachments
davidnagel
Sr Member
Good grief. Piggy is o0n fiiiirrreeeeeeeeeee
