Yellowstone Heritage and Research Center, Photo: Colleen Curry

Thursday, July 30, 2009

Making a Mannequin

I spent most of today constructing a mannequin for the early ranger uniform that I will be using in the "Creation of the National Park Service" case. The HRC does not have any mannequins, but will be getting some in a few weeks, so this one will be temporary.

I began by attaching a padded coat hanger to a large, torso sized piece of block ethafoam wrapped with batting. I attached them by tying them together with twill tape. Then, I covered the whole thing with muslin, which I pinned into the block ethafoam.

To hold the pants onto the bottom of the ethafoam, I made a makeshift belt out of a strip of muslin. Then, I made "suspenders" out of twill tape to hold the pants up. I rolled pieces of sheet ethafoam and tied them into tubes, which I used to "fill" the legs, and later, the arms. Next, I placed the coat on the hanger and used a little batting to fill the extra space between the jacket and the hanger and block ethafoam. I "filled" the arms the same way I did the legs.


The finished product will hang from a pole across the top of the exhibit case. Making the mannequin was definitely a process of trial and error, and I had to be creative to make it work. In the future, I will certainly appreciate the convenience of using a mannequin!

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