muslin on a giant peach ...question

[Standby]

So I have a 24' wide 4' tall top half of a peach for james and the giant peach. I made ribs down the front and sides and covered with chicken wire and newspaper paper machae....I'd like to now topcoat it with muslin to give a consistent covering....what's the best way to apply the water and glue mixture....brush or try and dip in a kiddie pool which I suspect might be messy....

Thoughts?

[derekleffew]

I'd "paint" it on--brush the surface with your glue/water mixture, apply the fabric, brush on more mixture to smooth wrinkles. By glue, do you mean standard white PVC glue (aka Elmer's)?

Two caveats:
As Mercator (and others prior) discovered, applying a two-dimensional surface to a, roughly, spherical one only leads to heartache. Thus your muslin pieces will need to be () shaped. This will take some trial and error, probably cutting and fitting the pieces dry first.

Papier-mâché is not the best material to be used on a stage. At the least, be sure to treat the piece with a flame retardant (the Roscoflamex products are probably the most well-known in our industry), before/during/after construction.

[Footer]

I would advise against coving it in muslin. Its not going to give you the look you think it will. However, if you do go forward with it, I would dip the piece of muslin in glue/water mixture, ring it out, then apply the piece. After its applied, using a brush, "paint" it in place with more water/glue mixture using a brush. This is essentially a dutchmen technique.

An alternative to covering it with muslin is covering it with scenic dope. Search VSSD, make a batch of that, and go nuts. You will have to master the trowl to get it just right, but it will give you a better seamless look.

[BrianWolfe]

If you have to use muslin I would try to use a HVLP gun to spray the glue/water mixture on then apply the muslin in ovoid strips.

If all you want is a good peacy texture why not skip the muslin and instead flock your sculpture. Just spray on the colored adhesive and add the right color flocking with an inexpensive flocking gun. We use Don-Jer for all our flocking supplies. Just be careful to do some tests on a scrap of the same material first. You might have to give the peach a coat of white glue first to stiffen it up.