  It is of interest to fabricate curved surfaces in three dimensions from
easily available homogeneous material in the form of flat sheets. The aim is
not just to obtain a surface $M$ in $\mathbb{R}^3$ which has a desired
intrinsic Riemannian metric, but to get the desired embedding $M \subset
\mathbb{R}^3$ up to translations and rotations (the Riemannian metric alone
need not uniquely determine this). In this paper, we demonstrate three generic
methods of molding a flat sheet of thermo-responsive plastic by selective
contraction induced by targeted heating. These methods do not involve any
cutting and gluing, which is a property they share with origami. The first
method is inspired by tailoring, which is the usual method for making garments
out of plain pieces of cloth. Unlike usual tailoring, this method produces the
desired embedding in $\mathbb{R}^3$, and in particular, we get the desired
intrinsic Riemannian metric. The second method just aims to bring about the
desired new Riemannian metric via an appropriate pattern of local contractions,
without directly controlling the embedding. The third method is based on
triangulation, and seeks to induce the desired local distances. This results in
getting the desired embedding in $\mathbb{R}^3$, in particular, it also gives
us the target Riemannian metric. The second and the third methods, and also the
first method for the special case of surfaces of revolution, are algorithmic in
nature. We give a theoretical account of these methods, followed by illustrated
examples of different shapes that were physically molded by these methods.
