Many people buy commercial figurines for their Christmas crib. Others, especially members of the Friends of the Crib societies founded in Malta and Gozo some 25 years ago, try their hand at making their own, deriving more pleasure and satisfaction.

There are various methods one can follow to make pasturi, or nativity characters, all requiring patience and attention. Here is one of my favourite methods.

I have decided on 20-centimetre pasturi, as smaller ones can take longer to make. I first work out how many characters I need for the nativity scene and prepare the separate heads, forearms and lower legs out of clay, each with a piece of thin wire sticking out, which would later attach them to the torso. I allow these to dry properly, paint on an undercoat and later add on the final colours.

For the heads I prepared two or three plaster moulds to use over and over again to produce only the face of the heads and modify each one to produce the image of an old man, woman or other character in freehand. I do not shape hair on all of them, because for female pasturi I prefer to do this after clothing them.

Although I have made several solid clay figures, these consume a lot of raw material, tend to be heavy and, once dry, cannot be reshaped or adjusted.

I then make a sort of skeleton out of cardboard to which I attach the head, forearms and lower legs. To this I add tissue paper to build up the torso, upper arms and legs and the final result resembles very much an undressed mannekin with movable joints.

I keep a supply of various colours of cloth and rags from old shirts and clothing, although at times I have to purchase other colours that I need. From this I cut out tunics, mantles, shawls, waistbands and kerchiefs for all the pasture, to prepare for the last but arduous job of clothing them and positioning them in natural attitudes on to the base or scene which I would have prepared beforehand.

For the clothing I spread the cloth on a newspaper, brush glue onto one surface, wrap the cloth loosely around the figure to resemble a dress and glue it on to the base, bending it into the required natural position.

Each of the pasturi is kept in position with sticks, lace-pins and string, all attached to the base until dry. I do not paint the dressed pasturi. The glue is transparent and sets hard, keeping all in shape when dry.

The colours are those of the original cloth and saves me the trouble of hours of painting.