Puppet Space

I didn't take pictures along the way this time. But here is the finished choir. And I also promised to make them as per the colors I picked out, but I didn't make the lavender lady. I made a mistake and made my blue guy too small so I decided to just go ahead and use him anyway, and I made another blue guy larger. So there is only one woman in the choir. Oh well, sorry about that! Here they are; nothing like the sketches LOL! And check out Grandma's wig! A friend picked that up at a yard sale for 50 cents!!! Can't beat that! Oh wait, I found a pic of them before... Amazing what features and costumes and arms will do!!!

Here are my sketches for four choir puppets. Will they turn out just like these? After the quartet, anything is possible. But I promise you this they will be made in these colors, I already bought the fabric, and there will be two men and two women. After that who knows!

After a few days deliberation, here's what they finally ended up looking like. Not too terribly different from the last picture. How close are they to my original drawings? Well, one guy has glasses! LOL I'm pleased with them. It was a lot of fun making them and they are going to be a lot of fun in our show. Next - the choir!

Here I just have some features. They are just pinned on. I'm not sure if I will keep these exact features or not. I'm really liking the one with glasses and long nose. I will replace his eyes with some black shiny ones. Those are just felt pads for now. In fact all of the eyes just have felt pads for now. I need to work with the focus a bit before making them permanent. I added on some teeth on one, and bags under the eyes of another. Each time I walk in and see them, I try a little something different. I'm still want to look at them for a while before I attach everything permanently. Soon I will post them all finished!

I made some dickies to go under the jackets. My mom made these hats to go on the puppets. Aren't they looking dandy? As soon as I get the bodies attached to the necks, I will get to the fun part. The features! Stay tuned...

This is one of the fun parts. I made the patterns myself. I've sewn kid's clothes for years so making a simple pattern isn't too hard. Here are three of the jackets cut out and ready to be sewn. It fits! Starting to look something like a Barbershop jacket. All four are done! They look ready to sing!

I made a bunch of bodies at once. I had enough 1" foam on hand to build 8 tube bodies. I'll use 4 of these later. For one of my puppets I plan on making a panel body. I'll show that when I get to it. Hands I used some scrap fabric for the arms since they won't show to save fleece. I'll turn them right side out and stuff them. I could have made the hands with foam, but this method saves on foam and uses poly-fil which I have more of at the moment. ;) My little stuffing machine. If you have a just turned 12 yo son who wants to play video games, you can get a lot of stuffing done. ;) Body with arms added I didn't cover the body since they are wearing costumes that will completely cover the foam. Next, costumes!

Here are all four heads done with necks! They look like they are singing already!

It's a little blurry but you can see the head starting to take shape. I forgot to take a picture of the mouth-plate. I'll try to get one next time. The mouth-plate really helps determine the shape of the head. It's square so the head is boxy looking. This is what I wanted. Here's the same head covered in blue fleece. I ended up taking in some darts in the mouth to make it lay flat on those corners. He'll be fun to add features to! Next I add the neck.

We'll have to wait a bit on the monster because I have to make some puppets for a song we are performing at church in May. I have 11 puppets to make for it!!! Here's what I'm working on now. The first four. A barber shop quartet. I'll try to post a few pics along the way. These are some of the patterns I made for the quartet. They will have the same shape head and same fleece color. They will each have different features. Here are my sketches. We'll see how close they resemble! I have some new techniques I want to try and some experimentation along the way.