Making a full-body Miss Piggy replica (WIP)

[KOMakesThings]

I've been working on making myself a Miss Piggy replica for a good while now. I usually avoid posting WIP shots of my projects for fear that I'll lose momentum and never actually complete them, but I think I'm safely past the point of no return with Piggy here. So lemme get ya'll caught up with where I'm at, and then I'll circle back to how I got here.

As far as I understand, the modern Piggy's head is made from cast foam latex that's then flocked, but that's a bit beyond me so I'm gonna go the route that most folks making Piggy take: Using good ol' foam and fleece. My Piggy is made from 0.5 inch foam, the head and limbs are upholstery foam and the torso and hips are EVA foam. I figured a sturdier foam would be good for the torso/hips, so that Piggy has a bit of structure to help hold her head up (Which I figure will be important with the weight of the wig she'll eventually be wearing).

I'm not actually gonna keep her arm as the foam FYI, I just wanted to get a base shape built so I could test the shape/size/proportions. Piggy is mostly together at this point, though I've held off attaching her nose as I think it might be easier to cover her head with the fleece if the nose isn't in place yet. I want my Piggy to be functional as a puppet but also look good standing in my office, so I'm planning on keeping the torso/hips detachable so that when I want her in puppet mode I just need to awkwardly bisect her.

So backing up to how I got here, I knew I would struggle trying to sculpt Piggy from scratch, so I decided to cheat a little bit with the cosplay trick of using saran wrap/duct tape to pull patterns from two pieces of Piggy merch: The Fisher Price Miss Piggy puppet, and the Miss Piggy Fantasy Dress-up Doll. I'm not great at making patterns, so I did have to do some tweaking and experimenting with where the seam lines needed to be (A lotta times I thought I needed a dart which turned out to be kinda unnecessary once I made the jump to the upholstery foam).

The Piggy doll strangely has flat feet (How very un-Piggy!), so I ended up drafting my own heeled foot to pull a pattern from. This was just some cardboard padded out with newspaper, then wrapped with masking tape. I ended up using the same method to draft Piggy's ears as well (Which I'm still undecided on regarding the size, guess I'll see how they look once they're covered with fleece).

I scanned the duct tape patterns, then printed them out on paper to test what size I needed to scale things too. I used my Kermit build to roughly check the size, though I found that it's kinda hard to guesstimate the relative height of a Muppet since we rarely see them full body with their feet planted on the ground.

You can see in these photos that I ended up doing a take 2 on the torso/hip pieces, my first attempt somehow resulted in a Piggy with a sorta wasp-like waist which I was not a fan of.

As mentioned, I did find that once I got Piggy to the foam phase I had to tweak the pattern a bit to remove some unnecessary darts/seams. Frankly I think there's a lotta polish that could be done to really perfect these patterns, but I don't think I have the patience to do that.

This is the V1 Piggy head, one of the fixes that I did was to make sure that parts of the face that needed a crisp edge (the lower lip, cheeks), were glued on at an angle. V1 the foam pieces were glued together flat edge to flat edge, and it (surprise) flattened out the face.

Oh, and another thing I had to redo... yeah don't use permanent marker to trace your foam pieces (Or if you do, be better about cutting off the drawn lines than I was). Turns out the fleece I got is a tad bit sheer, so you could see the drawn lines underneath it. So I ended up having to re-make the legs/feet, this time using a disappearing ink pen to trace the pieces. I'm planning on painting over the hard EVA foam pieces and then covering them with white fabric, so that should hopefully hide the permanent marker on those pieces (I really don't wanna recut foam if I can help it, I wanna move onto the fun parts of making Piggy as soon as I can).

And that's where I'm at! I've got a bit of work I wanna do on the body before I get to covering Piggy with fleece, but hopefully December will be a productive month.

 

[division 6]

Careful with the sharpie.
They have oils that will bleed through things

I've seen examples of it on the modeling forums.

 

[KOMakesThings]

Careful with the sharpie.
They have oils that will bleed through things

I've seen examples of it on the modeling forums.

Yeah I am a tad worried about that, but I'm also really hoping to avoid cutting out the torso/hip pieces again because they were a pain to glue and heat shape due to their thickness. I did try and wipe them off with rubbing alcohol, but the contact cement has basically sealed the ink in along the seams.

So my hope is that if I maybe mix some white paint with mod podge to seal/cover up any remaining ink, then cover the torso/hips with white fabric, hopefully that'll render them invisible/stop any seepage. I guess time will tell if I come to regret not just recutting that foam.

 

[division 6]

Hope it works out.

 

[bk85]

KOMakesThings Your progress is phenomenal so far, I love this build! It will be so great to see your completed Piggy side by side with your Kermit.

For future reference- one trick that I do is gluing up the foam so that the sharpie lines are in the interior rather than the exterior. I haven't yet ventured into complex foam patterning though, so not sure if that trick works as patterns get more complicated.

 

[KOMakesThings]

KOMakesThings Your progress is phenomenal so far, I love this build! It will be so great to see your completed Piggy side by side with your Kermit.

For future reference- one trick that I do is gluing up the foam so that the sharpie lines are in the interior rather than the exterior. I haven't yet ventured into complex foam patterning though, so not sure if that trick works as patterns get more complicated.

Thank you! There were a few spots on my Piggy where I glued the foam together at an angle so I would've had to account for that prior to reversing it, but I'll try using that trick in the future.

I can't wait until I can do a photoshoot with my Kermit and Piggy together, though I might rebuild my Kermit first. I still really want to try out your pattern for his head, and I'm currently debating upgrading from the Frog Nylafleece to the Frog Fuzzelle for him.

Speaking of Nylafleece, here's some Piggy build updates! I had ordered some Pink Champagne Nylafleece from Puppet Pelts, from the pic on the website I thought it was gonna be the perfect colour for Piggy... unfortunately the fleece leans much more towards the "Pink" than it does the "Champagne". That's on me for not having ordered a sample first. I ended up tinting the fleece a bit with some Rit Dye in the colour "Tan", which was admittedly a pain in the butt because I was not prepared with a large enough pot to dye all the fleece at once. I did each yardage separate, and had a few goofs here and there but thankfully my bad habit of overestimating how much fabric I need saved the day. Even with my goofs I managed to correctly dye 2 yards of the fabric, which seems like it'll be plenty for Piggy.

Here's an attempt to compare the original fleece colour (left) with the dyed version (Right), though FYI I had to try and colour correct this photo after the fact because I was having a real pain trying to battle the poor lighting in my craft room. I only noticed after dying the rest of the fleece that my bathroom has way better lighting, argh! So this photo isn't 100% accurate to the actual colours, but they should give you an idea of what I started with and where I ended up.

I jumped right into sewing up Piggy's legs, I was able to stretch the fleece enough that I have one long seam down the back of each leg, and a circular seam under her toes (I'll snap a pic of that tomorrow, forgot to do so tonight before I lost the light in my room again).

I am so dang pleased with the shape of these legs... photos don't do it justice I think. Kermit once described Piggy as having "Sturdy legs", I hope Kermit would approve of what I've come up with here!

Other than starting the sewing, I also putzed around with Piggy's nose a bit. Did a bit of testing on how to get some nice shape to the nostrils, and I think I've got a decent approach figured out. I'll make a note to take some more pics of that tomorrow as well!

 

[KOMakesThings]

More progress on Piggy! First up, some homework I had from last time (e.g., pictures I neglected to take).

First up, here's a shot of the seam on Piggy's legs. I described this round seam on the bottom of the toes, but it's a little hard to picture by description alone. So on each leg there's one seam going up the back of the leg/foot, and then this small round shape under the toes.

By the by, I haven't fluffed up any of the seams in any of these pictures, I figure I'll do all of that in one go once Piggy's fully fleeced. All the seams were sewn up referencing the video asavage posted on his Youtube channel about how the Henson stitch is sewn. I'll link the video here for those who haven't seen it yet:

"Adam Savage Learns the Infamous "Henson Stitch!" (In Support of @PuppetNerd)" - Tested Youtube Channel"Adam Savage Learns the Infamous "Henson Stitch!" (In Support of @PuppetNerd)" - Tested Youtube Channel

And then here's the interior of Piggy's nose... this is the demo version I made to test out how to get a bit more definition to the nostrils, and a bit more of a swoop to the nose. What I landed on was using a bit of EVA foam in the snout. The foam on the front of her nose will have slits cut in them for the nostrils, which are then glued into the holes cut into the EVA foam. And then I'll use a bit more glue on the inside of the nose to glue the top of the nose to the EVA foam insert, which is what makes the little swoop shape. It's a little rough looking here, I'll do a cleaner job of this on the final nose.

When it comes time to put the fleece on the nose I think I'm gonna sew the fleece through the nostril shape, securing it on the other side of the foam insert with some buttons. Kinda like what you do when adding buttons to a couch. That's my working theory anyways, it might change once I actually get to fleecing the nose.

Onto the other updates! I'm working on Piggy from the ground up, procrastinating fleecing her head because it feels very intimidating. Piggy's hips and torso are made from EVA foam, so they're a lot stiffer than her legs. I ended up gluing some bias tape on the inside of the hips and torso to facilitate sewing the fleece to the foam... I'm trying to future proof my Piggy a bit, and avoid gluing fleece to foam where possible. That way when/if the foam starts to degrade I can cleanly remove the fleece from the foam and hopefully be able to reuse it for the new version of Piggy.

I sewed down the bias tape so that it was basically just one long strip of double thick fabric, then glued it in with some contact cement. I didn't do the cleanest job at this and was a little worried about the tension of the taught fleece ripping the glue out, but it seems to be holding up alright. I find curved needles really awkward to sew with, but it was definitely necessary for sewing these edges down (Especially in the armholes in the torso).

For Piggy's torso I decided I wanted to shape her chest a bit more, so I added some bra inserts prior to adding the fleece. Bonus, this also helped cover up my kinda messy glue job on these seams.

(Also division 6, you'll be pleased to know I did eventually realise it would be better to just remake the torso/hip pieces to get rid of the sharpie lines. It was a pain in the butt to have to recut, reshape, and reglue all those fiddly foam pieces, but it was the right move to make).

I'm now at the stage where I feel like I'm violating Piggy's privacy by posting these pics? But it wouldn't be very helpful for a build thread to censor her, so here she is in all her glory.

That's where I'm currently at, we'll see if I feel brave enough to fleece Piggy's head, or if I'll procrastinate further by making her arms.

 

[bk85]

Incredible!

 

[KOMakesThings]

I was hoping to blast through the last of the fleecing with Piggy over Christmas break, but I didn't quite manage it for reasons I'll get into at the end. But here's a big ol' update to get up to speed.

First up, I did indeed procrastinate working on Piggy's head. I decided to sew her pearl necklace on... I just strung a bunch of pearl beads onto some embroidery thread, then sewed between each bead to attach the necklace to Piggy's torso. After knotting the necklace I was able to hide the tails of the knot by threading them through nearby beads, so the necklace is a seamless string of pearls.

For Piggy's arms I ended up cutting the fleece into two pieces, an upper and lower half. I had made a foam version of Piggy's arms for my mock up, and that turned out very handy for sewing the fleece because I could use it as a form to sew around. I've been finding it easier to hide the seams of the fleece by sewing inside out, so that's what I did for the arms... sew the upper and lower half together, then sew up the long vertical seam. Thanks to the stretch of the fleece, once I was done sewing I could just carefully peel the fleece off the foam form.

This is a pic from before I finished up all the sewing of the arms, but to stuff my arms I used cotton quilt batting wrapped around cores of foam dowel I got from Michaels (With a bit of extra cotton stuffing at the wrist and elbows to pad them out a bit). I like the quilt batting because I find that it's very easy with the cotton stuffing to end up with lumps and bumps under the surface of the felt, the quilt batting helps the surface even out. And I like using foam dowels to give the arms of my puppets a bit more structure, like a skeleton.

Piggy's hands I made by stacking a few layers of 1 inch foam together, then cutting it down to shape (Cutting the fingers thinner than I needed since the fleece will add bulk). Inbetween the two main layers of foam is a little cotton pocket for the arm rod, and wire twisted to shape so the fingers are poseable. I wish I had made the wire a bit longer on each of the fingers, my final hands come up a little short there. The wire of the thumb is pulled through a hole in the thumb, and sandwiched between more foam on the other side of the hand.

I was hoping that I could maybe cheat a bit and use a machine to sew the fleece for the hands... since Piggy will be wearing gloves, this seam doesn't need to be super pretty anyways, right? Well, I think I need more practice sewing stretch materials, because the stitch was very visible once I popped the foam hand in the fleece glove, and hidden or not that annoyed me. So I did spend a good few hours going over the machine stitch by hand. Then I just had to sew the hand to the arm, and the hands were done.

To sew the arm to the shoulder I ended up using a large gathering stitch to pull the very top of the arm together... same idea as sewing a sleeve to a shirt, there's a bit of ease in the top of the shoulder that you need to gather before sewing it in place. You can see the gathering stitch in the below pic, I removed it once I got the shoulders sewn in, then made sure there was enough stuffing inside Piggy's torso to puff the shoulders out.
I'll confess: the shoulder bunches up a bit when Piggy's arms are raised, I think maybe there's too much fabric in this area thanks to the gathering? As much as I like her nice rounded shoulders, I might go over this area with another round of sewing to try and take in some of the fabric, and see if that makes a noticeable difference.

Before fully committing with fleecing Piggy's head I procrastinated further by making this little EVA foam structure that kinda acts as her skull. It's shaped to avoid her nose area, and cups the underside of her lower lip. I was a bit concerned whether or not the upholstery foam alone would hold up to the weight of a wig, so this will hopefully help distribute the weight a bit.

I did give sewing up Piggy's head a try... only to realise afterwards that it wasn't sitting right. I also realised I should probably make the mouth plate and glue that in before sewing the fleece on to the head, which would probably help the fit issues... which made me realise that the red suede I had leftover from my Kermit replica wasn't totally accurate to Piggy. As far as I can tell, Piggy's mouth is more of a maroon colour.

I ordered some different suede hoping it would arrive while I was still on Christmas vacation, but alas the Canadian postal system was still trying to catch up from the recent strike. Though that turned out to be a moot point as the original suede I ordered turned out to be pretty different from the listing photos (way too dark, more purple than maroon). Thankfully the seller was extremely helpful and offered to colour match the suede for me, so I ended up sharing the above pic of Piggy with her and she dug through her stock to give me a few options. I actually don't know if there's an official name for these two swatches of suede she gave me, they are oddly shaped so I assume they were scraps that she had left over.

Left is the felt I'm gonna use for Piggy's tongue, I'm currently leaning towards the slightly lighter suede for the mouth plate? But if anyone has any strong feelings one way or the other, feel free to chip in. I'm hoping to get the mouth plate built this weekend, and then I can hopefully finish fleecing Piggy's head.

 

[KOMakesThings]

Hoo boy, well I was definitely not anticipating to go awol with the updates as long as I did, but hey I'm back finally. I have been working on Piggy all this time, I just got stuck in a loop of not knowing if I was liking how Piggy was turning out, switching gears to working on another part of Piggy while I took time to think about the previous part, AND THEN being unsure how the new part was turning, leading to switch gears again... all the while not wanting to share an update until I could return from the metaphorical Mount Sinai with a perfected Piggy in my hands, answers fully sorted and ready to share.

But at this point, despite hoping to have a perfect Piggy on the first go I'll just have to accept that I'll need to take a crack at her again one day... maybe not for a long while, as the burn-out is a-brewing. So I'll try and document the issues I ran into as I go, in case anyone out there wants to take their own shot at perfecting Piggy.

Anyways! Sob story over, onto the updates.

Previously where we last left off, I was mulling over the suede for Piggy's mouth. I ended up going for the darker suede from my last post, and glued it in place to the bottom of her mouth. I opted to treat each half of Piggy's mouth separate as opposed to the traditional mouth plate method. I figured with her snout it'd be a huge pain in the rear end to try and glue a full mouth plate in place.

I then fleeced the rest of Piggy's head, gluing the fleece down and around the lip line to try and help create that little 'tuck' that Piggy has around her mouth. Eventually I went in with a bit of fabric glue to try and lock the tuck in place a bit better.

One improvement to be made: I wish I left more of the suede visible around the lip line here. I did later try and pry the fleece up afterwards, but unfortunately I've got a massive spot of glue in one area that I can't remove, so the lip line is staying as is.

The fleece was glued in place around the side of the nose hole, but I left the fleece at the top of the nose unglued for now (More on that later).

Piggy's tongue was just some pink felt, with a fabric marker for the details. I actually didn't glue it in place at this point, this is when I was sensing that there was too much fleece around the lip line and I was telling myself I would maybe adjust it later (Curse you, glue stain).

How I approached Piggy's nose changed slightly from my prototype. I cut a slit for the nostrils, then glued a piece of fleece directly onto the tip of the nose, making sure to press the fleece into the nostrils. Originally I was trying to avoid gluing fleece directly to foam in the hope that if I remake Piggy one day I can easily strip the existing fleece and re-use it on the next version, but I couldn't get a good result here without the glue.

I ended up making this 2mm foam insert to slip into the nose, with a bit of elastic glued onto it that I could slip my hand into to puppeteer Piggy. The foam also helps stiffen up the bottom of the snout while still letting it remain flexible. Without this trying to puppeteer the snout meant the foam stretched downwards, and it broke the illusion a bit because you could tell that it was a set of fingers inside the snout pressing it down. Instead this keeps the bottom of the snout fairly straight and more "realistic" looking when pressed down (At the very least, no more clear indentations of my finger tips).

This is another screw-up I just realised now that I've attached Piggy's neck to my head: The elastic is too close to the tip of the nose, and I'm finding it's easy for my hand to slip out of place while moving Piggy's mouth. It should be moved back a bit more, closer to the base of the snout. I'm gonna have to try and figure out a solution to this, that hopefully doesn't involve me having to redo sewing Piggy's head to her neck.

This little bit of foam got glued into the snout, and I also ended up putting another small bridge of foam at the top of the snout to try and re-create that 'dip' in Piggy's nose that I liked from my prototype. Once again, more on that later though!

I glued another bit of suede to the underside of Piggy's nose, then fleeced the rest of it, gluing the fleece around the edge of the snout.

Then I needed to sew the snout into the rest of the face... this was pretty standard, though I did attempt to minimize the seam around the top of the nose by keeping the fleece on the head loose in this area. My thinking was that if I was sewing a flat edge of fleece to the nose that it would be easier to hide the seam... and well it maybe would've worked, but I also have a bit of a bump in this area from the underlying foam structure, so in certain lightings it ends up highlighting the seam quite a bit. Ah well. In hindsight I'd be curious to try only gluing the fleece around the side of the nose, with the fleece on the top of the nose free as well, and then maybe I could tuck some cotton batting under this area to smooth out the nose bridge prior to sewing it up? Might make for as smoother transition between nose and forehead that way.

It definitely doesn't look terrible, but it's also not the level of perfection I had in my head when I pictured Piggy. And I am coming to the realisation that my Piggy pattern course use a bit more forehead, but I'll maybe talk about that once I get to the post where I talk about the wig.

I almost forgot, regarding the nose bump for Piggy... I ended up sticking an arch of EVA foam into her snout, right around the area where the snout meets the face. this helps push the nose into that defined "bump" that I was looking for. There's no glue or anything here, it's just held in place by tension. Also you can see how I messily dealt with the connection of the upper and lower jaw here... I just glued some felt onto it, which led to a fit of "No one will see this ugly mess once the head is sewn to the neck" frustration.

I haven't yet felt brave enough to add pastels to Piggy's face to do her make-up and blushing, so for now that Pigg's head down. I do have Piggy's eyes, ears, and neck done as well, I'll be posting the making of those this week to get the thread caught up to where I'm at with her.

 

[Apollo]

AMAZING work!!!!!!!

 

[KOMakesThings]

Ear time! Piggy's ears were made out of more of the upholstery foam with a pattern I drafted the same way I made the pattern for Piggy's feet where I sculpted a shape out of cardboard, newspaper, and masking tape, to then wrap with duct tape and pull a pattern from.

My ear might be a bit too thick, but I really wanted to get a decent curve to her ear, as opposed to some of Piggy's thinner, more 'rabbit-like' ears that stand pretty straight up.

I cut out the centre shape of the ear and then threaded a bit of wire in, securing it with a copious amount of hot glue on the inside. Then I sealed that mess up with another piece of foam. This is also where I realised I should probably take photos angled up so I stop revealing the chaotic state of my bedroom floor during craft time.

And then this was a last minute decision to add a tiny bit more shape to Piggy's ear, just a little extra wedge of foam that I could glue around to try and mimic how at the base of Piggy's ear this inner edge fades out quite a bit... well, on some Piggy's anyways, along with the rest of her Piggy's ears have changed shape quite a bit over the years.

My Piggy's ears are covered with two pieces of fleece, a front and a back, with the front piece being glued in around the inner edge of the foam. As with the head I haven't felt brave enough to add the pastels in just yet, but I will be dusting a bit around the inner edge of the ear for a bit of depth.

Full disclosure, I haven't actually stabbed the ears into Piggy's head to confirm how well they hold up. But even with the added fleece these things are pretty light, and I feel like since I added the EVA foam structure to the inside of my Piggy's head I can anchor them in that.

 

[KOMakesThings]

Eye time!

Piggy's eyes I made in a slightly convoluted way... This would've been much easier if I modelled a shape and used my 3D printer to print out two eyes. But I wasn't sure on the shape of eye I wanted, and also at this point in time we were having a major cold snap in Canada and I wouldn't have been able to crack a window to vent the fumes from my resin printer. So instead, I opted to use some Super Sculpey oven bake clay to make a base shape for Piggy's eyes. I made one side first, sanded the base flat, then sculpted the second side onto the back of the first eye to try and make a mirrored, symmetrical pair of eyes.

Originally I tried to heat form Thibra, a smooth thermoplastic over the Sculpey eye, but it was damn near impossible to remove the thibra from the Sculpey. So I realised I needed to make a silicon version to heat form over that instead.

So I cast the Sculpey eye shapes using some re-useable silicon mold beads, and then I used that mold to cast a 2 part silicon putty. That left me with two silicon eye shapes that I could then use to heat form worbla overtop of the eyes. Once the worbla was shaped around the eye I trimmed down the edges and then applied some flexible modelling paste to try and smoothen out the worbla texture, sanding inbetween layers of paste.

The Thibra would've worked way better here and required less smoothing, but I had used up the last scraps I had on my failed attempts to heat form over the Sculpey eyes.

Piggy's iris was made out of some blue felt coloured with chalk pastels (And then sealed with a matte spray varnish). The pupils are some sticky-backed black velvet, the same stuff I used to make my Kermit's pupils, with a spot of white velvet paper for the eye shine. The eye shine here was way too big, I did end up cutting smaller ones later. I used a thin tip sharpie to draw the lines around Piggy's eyes, and sharpie was also used to add the black rim around the felt iris.

I made Piggy's eyelid out of some of the scrap nylafleece that I previously dyed for her body. So it was already a peachy flesh tone that I dyed further with a mix of Rit Dye's Hyacinth and Scarlet. I can't recall my exact ratios of the purple vs red dye, but I do recall the final dye that I went with leaned more on the red side.

Piggy's eyeliner/lash line were made out of more of that black velvet. For Piggy's lash line I rolled a strip of black velvet hot-dog style over itself a few times to build up some height, and put that directly on the eye. Then I applied a second bit of black velvet over the edge of the fleece, forming the top most lash line.

In making Piggy's eyes I was primarily referencing the below picture... here the two layers of the lash line are very offset... but I was finding that looked a bit odd and chunky on my Piggy. Ya'll ever have that, where you're trying to follow reference exactly and yet it somehow looks off when you do it? I instead opted to layer the velvet with way less offset on my Piggy.

Doing this layering formed a neat little seam that I could then shove multiple pairs of human-sized lashes into. I tried to find the longest lashes I could, which was 25 mm long. I do think they could stand to be a bit longer still... I think I might have had better luck around Halloween time where dramatic lashes are more plentiful (That, or maybe beauty supply stores would have more variety in lash length). But stacking multiple lashes did a decent enough job filling in Piggy's lash line. Each eye has three lashes, with two lashes stacked on top of each other on the outer edge of each eye.

Lastly, the bit of eyeliner under Piggy's eye is just more of that sticky-back black velvet. I stacked two layers of the velvet sticky sides together, cut out a curve, then glued it onto the back of the eye.

I haven't yet figured out how I'm attaching the eye to Piggy's head, my current plan of attack is to glue some black felt into the back of the eye and then sew that to the fleece.

Now, I don't think I quite captured the shape of Piggy's eyes. From some angles I don't think they look too bad, but other angles I think it's clear that my Piggy eyes are way too round. I'm currently debating doing another attempt at the eyes, this time flattening the sclera area... but as previously mentioned I'm feeling a lot of burn out working on Piggy, and I'm also working towards an end-of-April completion date for her as I want to bring her to my local comic convention. So I'm gonna try and get the rest of her done first, and then if I have time I might try and redo the eyes before the convention. And if not, I think the existing eyes I made look alright, even if the shape is a bit off.

 

[Benjamoose]

If it makes you feel any better, Piggy's eyes varied quite a lot over the years.

From the picture you posted above, it immediately registers as Miss Piggy to me and looks great!

I look forward to seeing any iterations though if you end up flattening them.

 

[KOMakesThings]

If it makes you feel any better, Piggy's eyes varied quite a lot over the years.

From the picture you posted above, it immediately registers as Miss Piggy to me and looks great!

I look forward to seeing any iterations though if you end up flattening them.

Thank you! Yeah I think it does help that Piggy's had a pretty wide range of looks over the years, not just her eyes but her face shape as well. Granted I don't know if any of them had eyes quite like my current Piggy, but at least there's enough of a resemblance there that hopefully most folks won't notice the inaccuracy right away.

I am still mulling over whether or not I should reattempt the new eyes before the end of April. Adam Savage is coming to my local comic con and so there's a bug in my ear saying "You know you want to have the best damn Piggy you can make when you show it to him...". So we'll see what wins out in the end!

 

[animator]

Your work on Piggy is just amazing!

 

[KOMakesThings]

Your work on Piggy is just amazing!

Thank you! I've gone a bit back on forth on how I feel about my Piggy, but I think I'm now over that initial disappointment of not making her perfect from the first go I'm pretty proud of how close I did get (especially as someone who doesn't make puppets often).

Anyways, onto some more updates! Firstly, I did figure out how to attach the eyes to Piggy... I used the same method as how I sewed the fleece onto Piggy's EVA foam body: bias tape glued with contact cement onto the inside of the eye shell. Then I just needed to sew the eyes to the face, just catching that outermost edge of the bias tape.

I forgot to get a good picture of this as I was sewing the eyes on the face, but I didn't pull the thread taught as I sewed. I left it fairly loose as I sewed all around the eye, then I went back and using another needle started pulling the thread taught stitch by stitch. This was the easiest way to stitch the bias tape to the fleece while keeping it all hidden underneath the eye shell.

As you can see, I have started to add the blushing to Piggy... I haven't applied it to the cheeks yet though, as I still need to sew the wig to her head and I figure I might have to manhandle her face a little bit to do that, so I'll add the blush on after.

For the blush I'm using these Faber-Castell chalk pastels, this is the same set of colours I used to tint Piggy's pupils. I think the colours I've been using for the blush are the 129 and 127 shades (The legend doesn't seem to line up perfectly with how the pastels are arranged in the set). The lighter pastel is the main one I've been using, with the darker being an accent for slightly more depth. I just rub the pastels against a piece of paper, then use some dollar store make up brushes to rub them into Piggy's fleece. A little goes a long way here.

In the event of screw ups with these pastels, I have been able to remove some of them with rubbing alcohol. I accidentally dropped an iris onto Piggy's snout before I sealed it and it left a noticeable blue mark that was able to get out thanks to blotting with paper towels/the alcohol.

While on the subject of Piggy's snout, I want to point out another of my mistakes when assembling Piggy's head. I achieved a way nicer curve to Piggy's cheek in my paper mock up... With my pattern at least, the cheek should've been created when attaching the snout to the rest of the face, but when I sewed the final snout to the final face, I didn't pay attention to this and my Piggy ended up with a way flatter cheek. This is gonna be something I try and fix at a later date, hopefully by just unpicking the snout from the face and resewing the entire thing. I did unpick a small bit of my Piggy's face and try to resew it, but I wasn't really able to get the fullness I wanted which is what makes me think I'll have better luck if I resew everything at once.

Alternatively, I have debated unpicking one of the seams on the back of Piggy's head and shoving a wedge of circular foam into the cheek area to define it a bit more, but I'm in a slight con crunch mode with Piggy and I'd rather she be comfortably "Done" than be scurrying last minute trying to resew her.

This is where Piggy's at at this point. I still need to sew the wig to the head, and attach her ears after that. I also need to finish her skirt and shoes, as I've scheduled a photoshoot with Piggy at my local comic con at the end of the month and I want to get some full body shots.

Piggy's bodice came together somewhat smoothly. I'm not great at pattern making, but I have sewed a few bodices in the past and knew the gist of where to place the seams. The fabric is this really nice vintage fabric I got from Etsy, it does not show very well in the photos but it has metallic tinsel sewn into it, so it glitters and has a tiny hint of purple which felt perfect for Piggy. The brooch is a vintage one I got, also from Etsy.

I ended up adding a somewhat crudely patterned peplum to Piggy's bodice, to help her feel less bisected when she's in Puppet mode. I say crudely because it doesn't quite sit how I wanted it to on her, but if I flip it up over itself slightly it looks a bit better.

While on the subject of Piggy's clothes, this is what I ended up doing for Piggy's gloves. I had tried and failed twice to find a good stretchy satin fabric online... the first fabric had way less stretch than advertised, and the second fabric was just a complete cat-fish (bathing suit material instead of the nice satin that was advertised).

So out of frustration, I ended up going with what had been my first idea for Piggy's gloves... customize some of those cheap stretch satin gloves you see everywhere at Halloween. This was really surprisingly effective, even though I had to lop off an entire finger to fit Piggy's hand. In addition to the tweaks below, I did also shorten the top hem of the gloves.

I will say though... this fabric is an absolute pain in the butt, it loves to snag on anything and everything. Including the dry skin around my fingernails, which makes me feel not-at-all self conscious about how much I moisturize. Had I know how easy it would snag I would've left the gloves off Piggy until she was fully complete, she keeps catching on things as I move her around. At some point I'll just customize another set of gloves, so she has a pristine pair and a pair to use when she's out and about.

I don't have a good segue for this bit: Here's how I made Piggy's neck. I cut an asymmetrical tube shape out of some foam, then added this little flange piece to the front. I glued the fleece on top of that, and inserted it into Piggy's torso. The little flange piece doesn't look like much, but it's enough that it keeps Piggy's head from popping out of her torso.

Then I cut out another asymmetrical tube shape out of some cotton fabric, then sewed that to the top of the neck, and the bottom of Piggy's torso to make the arm sleeve... and then of course, sewed Piggy's head to her neck.

So that's pretty much where things are at! As mentioned previously my to-do list is currently to:

1. Sew the wig to the head
2. Add blush pastels
3. Finish Piggy's skirt
4. Finish Piggy's shoes
5. BONUS: Make Piggy a tulle boa

I'll also probably make a separate post showing the little stand I made for Piggy (Spoilers, but a pool noodle helps a lot to keep Piggy's head upright with the weight of the wig on there.

 

[bk85]

KOMakesThings She’s looking AMAZING!! I’m so impressed because she is easily one of the best Piggies that I’ve seen made with the patterned foam method. Even much better than most of the true professional full time builders whose attempts I’ve seen on various replica building forums. Phenomenal work so far.

 

[KOMakesThings]

KOMakesThings She’s looking AMAZING!! I’m so impressed because she is easily one of the best Piggies that I’ve seen made with the patterned foam method. Even much better than most of the true professional full time builders whose attempts I’ve seen on various replica building forums. Phenomenal work so far.

That's an incredible compliment, thank you so much! I'm really glad I gave a good showing to the patterned foam method, I think it's so much more accessible than carving Piggy from a solid block of foam like I've seen a lot of other builders do. I'd love to see more folks tackle Piggy using this method so we can really nail down an ideal process.

On that note, I hope you're planning on taking a crack at Piggy yourself. I think you have far more patience than I do to test and perfect patterns so I'd love to see what you could come up with.

And for the record, I'd be quite happy for others to post their own Piggy's in this thread as folks have taken to do with ECL's Kermit thread. The enthusiasm/knowledge sharing that happens on this forum is my favourite thing about it, the more of that the better!