Thursday, April 26, 2012

Children Need Puppets Too!

Emily has been feeling a little left out of the puppet building, so this weekend we decided to work on puppets of a different sort... paper bag puppets!



Daddy named his puppet "Moe" (as he was made from a Moe's bag) and Emily gave hers the name "Emily."    Okay, the names weren't the most creative!



When you're focused on buying fleece, felt, fur, and foam,  it's easy to forget how much fun you can have with what you already have around the house!



It only took a few minutes to make the puppets, and just a few crayons, markers and bags from fast-food joints, but we played with them for hours! 







Review: Build-a-Bear Workshop Make and Play Kit


REVIEW: Build-a-Bear Workshop Make and Play Kit





During on of our puppet supply runs to Michael's, we happened across these sewing kits for children from Build-a-Bear.  We decided to try it out!



Emily was able to thread the child friendly safety-needle all by herself!


Veronica got the stitching started. There were big holes to thread the plastic needle though, which makes the stitching very simple.




Emily was able to do a lot of the stitching, which was really nice.  The plastic safety-needle and pre-punched holes made it simple.  The only thing that tripped us up was making sure the holes were lined up properly. We had to take the thread out a few times, which was no big deal.


^ Lining up the holes.



^ Veronica holding the material together while Emily stuck the needle into the proper hole.


Emily stuffed the bear mostly by herself.


But Daddy helped by making sure the stuffing got into the head and arms.


^ Emily posing with the bear she made!


Emily want to get one of her daddy too!


And one of Veronica! 


If you're looking for a simple sewing project for a young child, we highly recommend the kits from Build-a-Bear!  They are extremely simple and very child-friendly.


 

Tuesday, April 24, 2012

Hands Jive!

Veronica: "YAY! We now have an AMAZING new banner designed by Chuck! Doesn't it look great? Today we worked on the hands of the puppet. There were a few snafus, which we.... Worked out?"



The Puppeteer's Unite YouTube tutorial said it would be easiest to stitch the hands together, then cut it out from the fabric. One mistake though, Veronica sewed the bottom section and didn't reinforce the edge, so the thread started to come out at the bottom of the arms. Fixed by going over it a few times.


Next she cut each hand into two chunks to make trimming it down easier.


While she worked on that, Chuck was busy tracing his own pattern.


The tutorial suggested using a dowel for turning the hand and arm right side out, but Veronica didn't was too impatient for that and did it by hand.  Chuck followed the instructions. 


One of Chuck's hands traced and stitched.  You can see the errors he made with this hand- made the fingers too close together, missed the turn while sewing the thumb and made it too thin, and got off-track somehow on the first finger.  But he learned from those mistakes and did much better with the second hand!


Chuck working hard on his puppet. 


Both of Veronica's hands and arms once she got them turned right side out.  




Chuck using one a dowel to stuff his "good" hand with poly-fill.


The good hand is done!  Notice that the fingers are spaced much better and the thumb is the right shape.  As Admiral Kirk would awkwardly say to a hot young Vulcan, "We learn by doing."


When getting ready to attach the arms.... Veronica did not realize that the doll-arm piece would lock into place. Plus, these were FAR too big for the puppets. We'll have to find smaller ones for the next puppets.

Next time we'll be stitching the arms onto the puppets!

Tuesday, April 17, 2012

Glue the Face Down

We're back with a brief update!  Tonight we did only a small step, and that was gluing the "face" to the foam skull.


Chuck: "Here is my puppet all pinned down and ready to be glued.  You can see the error I made when cutting the fleece... it's making the mouth asymmetrical.  That will be something to be careful of the next time!"


Veronica working the glue under the fleece.


Veronica: "You have to carefully pull back the fleece and gently squeeze the glue gun or too much glue will come out."


Slowly making her way around the edge.





Veronica: "Getting it to stay in the corners was the hardest part..."


"Mostly because the glue gun wasn't shaped well to go into such spaces."


VoilĂ ! Two puppets with their bodies and mouth-plates attached! Next time we'll be working on the arms and hands!

Putting it Together

When we last left our Puppet Makers they had just completed their second quest in the real world, to get thread that worked on a sewing machine! They were successful and returned home to fiddle with the brand-new sewing machine that had yet to be taken out of the box....


Even the great Veronica did not recall how to thread a bobbin, but after searching youtube she managed to find a tutorial that showed her all the proper steps...


That completed, she attempted to remember how to attach the bobbin. When THAT was finally settled.... The thread was coming out black. WTF?! Chuck and Veronica finally figured it was coming from the bobbin holder and attempted to clean it out....


 In this attempt Veronica thought it a grand idea to take out the screw. This was a bad idea. It was MUCH shorter than she expected, and when she attempted to pick it up from her lap it popped right out of her fingers and fell onto the carpet! Poor lost screw. Now what happens?!


After hunting slowly over the carpet for about 20 minutes, Veronica FINALLY found the screw. See how TINY that thing is?


YAY! Veronica got the whole machine threaded without any more problems! Both Chuck and Veronica did a few practice runs with scrap fabric.


With all of that settled, Veronica FINALLY got to the task of sewing....


Veronica: "We had the machine set up on the coffee table in the living room. We really need a dedicated work space for this!"


Yay! The head piece is together!

 

Next to stitch the two body pieces together...


 Putting on the final touches....


Veronica: "Before I attached the body to the head I shoved the foam skull into the fabric head covering. It's starting to look like a real puppet!"


Next was Chuck's turn. This was his first time using a sewing machine!


He's getting the hang of this!


Trying to stuff the foam skull inside the fabric head cover...


With success!


Chuck: "This pattern was designed for people with tiny hands!  I will definitely have to scale it up next time."


 The resemblance is striking!



Almost a puppet!


Chuck performing the VERY difficult task of attaching the head to the body...


The puppets watching a fantastic tutorial!


Yay! They are so happy that they now have bodies.


Veronica's puppet smiling.


Veronica got some puppet lovin'.