The Clown Army

This is my second sustained investigation.  My inquiry question is how can I bring characters to life and make them noticeable or interactable in unusual ways.  The result of this specific sustained investigation was four magnetic clown guys.

The materials that I used for the clown's bodies were white fabric, I'm not sure if it's cotton or not, and fuzzy string. The hair and noses are made out of felted red wool, and the eyes are acrylic paint, except for one of the clowns where I used a Micron instead and it bled a little bit. The clothes are made of cotton, and the bowties are ribbons that I glued together with hot glue. The hands and feet have little magnets glued to them.

The original idea for this project was to make a mobile type thing, because it would be noticeable, but it wasn't all that interactable. My next idea was to make them into a wind chime, because I wanted to incorporate sound into one of my projects, but I wasn't sure how I would do that. Glass, metal, and wood were some of the options for a wind chime, but I didn't know how to connect those materials to the inquiry topic. I then remembered that weird magnetic creatures exist and I decided that magnetic clowns fit the theme because they are both noticeable and interactable. Adding magnets was the idea I came up with after the clowns were almost finished. I originally started the project by making a wire circle as the mobile that they would hang from, but I scrapped that later. I started the clowns by making a sewing pattern. I already knew how I was going to construct the clown because I had figured out that fuzzy string arms worked in my Alternate Material project in ceramics II. I lost the sewing pattern that I used for that clown, (and ended up finding it after I finished these guys) so I guessed the sizes and made a new one. I sewed the strings into their bodies with a sewing machine, and I sewed their heads together on the machine as well. I stuffed them with more fuzzy string, and then hand sewed their heads onto their bodies. It looked very messy there, which is why they have bowties. I felted the noses and hot glued them on, and I started the hair of the one with the dark green shirt and glued it on as well. I realized that I should have waited for that, and didn't do the hair for the rest. I sewed the clothes for all of the clowns, and once those were done I glued their bowties on. Then I started working on the hair, and I added the eyes after each one was finished. I was originally going to make little circles for the magnets to go in for the hands, but I didn't know how I would sew those on without making them super messy. I just glued the string around the magnets. I think they count as noticeable because you can stick them anywhere magnetic, like the doorframe or the whiteboard. They are also interactable for the same reason, they can be moved around and put in different places.