First step was the creation of the bevelled part of the top of the torso - hereafter referred to as the 'collar'. This was to be 50cm diameter at the bottom, bevelled at 45 degrees. I started out by making a cardboard frame as shown.

This consists of two annulus-shaped cuts of cardboard glued to each other (to create double-thickness) and 12 triangular cardboard buttresses to give the required angle. This is covered by a curved cardboard surface to give the overall shape.

The white paper template was a neat idea I remember from school for approximating the unrolled shape of a curved and angled surface. The wide edge is roughly 1/12 of the circumference of a 50cm circle. The narrow edge is 1/12 the circumference of the top edge of the bevel (a 30cm circle), and the two sides are the length of the 45 degree bevelled surface (i.e. 10cm times square root of 2). If you lay out 12 of these templates edge to edge the shape they will make is roughly the shape of the unrolled surface of the bevel. If you trace them out on cardboard you can just cut out the approximately correct shape with minimal measuring. Neat huh?