Nativity Scene - Joseph

I want to document my process for making these nativity scene pieces so I will start with showing the Joseph piece and include pictures along the way.  This one I am going to again just use poplar and stain the pieces the color I want them.

You start with a pattern like this.  Each piece is marked and a color suggestion.  M is medium color, D is dark color, L is light color and the face and hands are White.  I will leave the face and hands plain poplar, since that is the wood it calls for anyway. I still need to decide on the other colors but that can come later.  (The suggested wood is Sycamore for the light, Beech for the medium, Black Walnut for the dark, and Poplar for the face, hands, and feet.)  The pattern also has some shaping suggestions.  The shaded areas are those areas where you want to sand down more to create depth.  For example, the top of the head will get sanded down to make it appear to go up under the headdress.

After placing the pattern on the piece of poplar, I cut out all the pieces.  I separated them a little here so you can see the cuts. The hardest part is trying to determine what order to cut them in.  You want to try and cut the smaller pieces while they are still attached to larger pieces so you have something to hold on to.  I managed to cut all these out with my fingers in intact! This piece is about 3 inches tall.