amazing floats for the "worlds fair"

I have learned a few things about small town life since moving here 2.5 years ago. This small town in particular has a deep heritage that they are trying to protect and pass on. It is amazing to see the community come together for monthly fun, community activities. Whether they are painting rocks to hide around town, or doing the polka to the German band that has come to play in the beer garden. Maybe it's the zucchini races or the cardboard boat races at the local pool. Whatever they have planned they have the family in mind and fun is at hand. A good time is sure to be had at these community events. The biggest community event of the year is the FAIR!! This is no small fair. This fair includes all the carnival rides you'd expect and the  carnival games that are near impossible to win. This fair includes livestock showings, judging of art work, photography, collections, jams, cakes and other delectable desserts. This fair includes a queen and a "future king and queen" as well. This fair boasts everything that you would find at a fair in a city twice as large. 

However, the most impressive part of the fair is not having four parades in three days, the antique tractors and classic cars, the local bands that march (and don't forget the cheerleaders) but the floats. These floats are beyond impressive and until you really know how much work goes into these floats you probably don't see the grand scale of wonder and awe that these floats can produce. 

Float work begins almost as soon as one fair ends. But in reality the float committees take a few months off. But I'm sure they're always thinking about what they will create next. In the school they have the students draw what they think would make a good float. They have a contest and let the student body decide on which design they should use. Then the work begins; drawing the plans, finding a trailer, finding a huge working garage, ordering non-bleeding tissue paper, and recruiting the help. By May the designs are finalized and the tissue paper cutting begins. All summer long people are seen cutting, counting, pleating and fluffing thousands and thousands of little tiny tissue paper flowers. When you offer to help they will put you to work and you will find out soon which step you like the best. I prefer to fluff, but I know plenty of people who don't want anything to do with fluffing so they will count or pleat. Each flower starts as a huge piece of tissue paper which is then cut down to size and stacked in piles of four. Then the tissue paper is pleated and a wire is wrapped around the middle.

After the pleating comes the fluffing. The four pieces of paper are separated from the other pieces and a flower is formed!! Thousands and thousands of flowers in MANY different colors are pleated and fluffed. If you come into the church building or the classroom you will see boxes and boxes of flowers filling the space.

While some people are pleating and fluffing flowers some others are working on the wood structure of the float. Many times these float includes lights and moving parts. Someone has to have the knowledge to make the wooden base and all the electrical wiring to make things move and light up. This wood base is from our church float from 2017 (I didn't have photos of the base of our school float from this year) just to give you an idea of what it looks like.

The flowers are then put onto cardboard and the wire that wrapped around the middle of the pleated flower is poked through the hole and then split in the back to keep it in place.


Lines have to be carefully measured and marked to make sure the flowers stay in nice clean rows!

The flowers are placed in the boards and then the boards are attached to the wood base of the actual float. As you can see each step takes a lot of man hours and expertise.

This is the finished float that the Lutheran school made this year. Isn't it amazing?! As you can tell it took many many thousands of hours to put this beautiful creation together. This year there were 5 floats in the parades and now it probably makes sense to you why they have the floats go through all 4 parades. With all the work, time and effort that goes into these floats they want to show them off as often as possible.

Here is our church's float from this year too.

These floats are beautiful works of art. The time and creativity that each of these takes is amazing. I am so excited that we have gotten to experience this small town fair. It really is amazing what a town this size can pull off. I am totally impressed. I hope that those who attend the parades and see the floats can really appreciate the time and effort that goes into each and every float that comes down our street in the "Worlds Fair".