This fantastic character was sent to us recently by Stephen from the UK. His name is Weed and here’s his character description -

“This little chap is most often to found a’ tilling and a’ digging, a’ planting and a hopin’ on his allotment located somewhere deep inside Epping Forest in England.

Truth be known he’s not an exceptionally good or lucky gardener (hence the name) but it is rumoured that he once had a successful crop of Rhubarb and Custard. He takes great umbrage if anyone suggests that all he really does all day is sit in his shed - drinking tea.” - Stephen

Weed was Stephen’s first attempt at a foam-based puppet. Here’s what he had to say on the subject -

“I do have a creative streak and love making puppets - up until now I was making large paper mache puppets and they’re okay and very enjoyable to make. But I always felt that, although I was okay at character design, sculpting and stuff like that, my paper mache ones were never really as expressive as I would like. No moving mouth you see.

I wanted to get into foam, but just didn’t have a clue how you guys achieved the head shapes and had no idea about patterns etc. The fab thing about your patterns are that they give me a blank canvass to work on. I truly am rejuvenated in the whole puppet thing again. My plan is to get enough characters built to start up a small puppet theatre company in my home town, if I can find some like-minded folks. There’s not much in the way of theatre or performance in the town I live in - bit of a cultural desert you might say.. so lots to do. But I’m going to do it. It’s been a long LONG term ambition of mine.” - Stephen

So good to hear. We’ll be sharing another of Stephen’s characters very soon, as well as other inspiring puppets and stories from some of our customers. Keep up the great work!

Hi all! It’s been a great year for puppets and puppetry! We just wanted to take a moment to thank our customers for their continued support. Thanks!

We’ve received many submissions to the Project Puppet Gallery over the past month or so. Unfortunately, we have not been able to post these wonderful creations in the gallery yet. The Project Puppet website is currently being re-designed. The new and improved site should be launched early next year, at which time all the wonderful characters that have been sent in to the gallery will be posted for all to see. In the meantime, we will be sharing a few of these great puppet characters right here on the blog. So, stay tuned…

Here are some pictures of characters based on The Glorified Sock Puppet Pattern created by Michele Sovereign over at Puppet Planet! What we really enjoy about Michele’s characters is that many of them are female - a fairly tricky business in the puppet building world. Thanks for sending your great character creations Michele!

It’s here! The third pattern release in Project Puppet’s Simple Series is The Pinhead Pattern. As the name suggests, the Pinhead is based on a conical shaped head base, similar to the Punto Pattern, but with the same ease of construction that our Simple Series patterns make possible. The Pinhead’s pointed or conical head shape lends itself to the creation of a variety of character types and, of course, it goes together in a matter of hours. Enjoy!

The Puppet Shirt Tutorial conveniently organized!

The Arm
The Body of the Shirt
The Sleeve Pattern
Sewing the Sleeves
Putting It All Together

Remember, this tutorial is very basic, but it should give you a good start in creating different styles of clothing for your characters. You could add collars, turtle necks, buttons down the front, dress cuffs with buttons (or better yet cuff links). And though the pattern is based on the Simple Series patterns at Project Puppet, the principles behind the pattern can be applied to making clothes for any simple hand puppet. Enjoy!

Let’s finish it up…

• With the sleeve turned wrong side out, lay the finished puppet arm on top as shown in the picture above. Make sure the thumb of the puppet hand is toward the folded part of the sleeve.

• Stitch along the top of the arm (the Shoulder edge of the sleeve), attaching the two together.
• Now turn the sleeve right side out over the puppet arm. Voila! You have attached the sleeve to the arm.

• Repeat the above steps for the other arm and sleeve.
• Attach both arms (with sleeves attached) by whipstitching them to the puppet body as per your Simple Series pattern instructions.

We hope you enjoyed the tutorial. Remember, this is only the beginning! You may add a collar and tie, a turtle neck, buttons down the front, or dress cuffs around the bottom of the sleeves. A variety of different styles of clothing are possible from this basic pattern. What would your puppet character wear?

We’re ready to put the sleeves to the sewing machine!

• Sew Seam 1 on both sleeves. Simply stitch along the traced line, leaving the Shoulder and Cuff Edge open.

• With scissors, trim around each sleeve. Cut along the traced line of the Shoulder and Cuff Edge. Cut the excess fabric from the seam edge. Try to trim as closely as possible to the seam, but be careful not snip the stitches.

Now we’ll give the Cuff Edges a finished look.

• With the sleeve turned wrong side out, turn up the Cuff Edge about 3/8 of an inch. You may want to press the cuff in place with a warm iron, depending on the type of fabric used for the shirt.

• Sew around the edge of the cuff. The Cuff Edge should look like the picture above.
• Repeat the steps for the other sleeve.

The sleeves are complete! In the following step we’ll put everything together…

First download the Free Sleeve Pattern! (You’ll need Adobe Reader to view and print it.) Cut the pattern out.

• Cut two 8 X 10 inch pieces from your shirt fabric.
• Fold one of the pieces in half lengthwise and with the wrong side of the fabric out. Place the Sleeve Pattern on top.
• Line up the longest straight edge of the pattern with the fold of the fabric and trace the remaining three sides (as shown in the picture above). You’ll also notice, in the picture, that we have trimmed the shirt fabric to roughly follow the Seam 1 edge of the pattern. You may do this if you wish, but it’s not necessary.
• Repeat these steps for the other sleeve.

Now we’re ready to sew…

Before we get started with the sleeve pattern, there are a few preliminary steps in the building of the puppet that should be done.

• When completing Step 3 of your Simple Series instructions (specifically Step 3-4 and 3-5), be sure to use the shirt fabric of your choice for the Front and Back Body Pattern pieces, instead of the fleece. This will provide the body of the shirt.

• Continue with the subsequent steps. Stop after completing Step 5-4. At this point, you should have completed the puppet’s head, body, and arms, though the arms are not attached.

Now, we’re ready for the sleeves…

Over the next few days, we’ll be sharing a free pattern and instructions for creating a very basic shirt for your Simple Series puppets. The pattern is for a long-sleeve shirt, but can easily be adapted to short sleeves.

So, first things first, we need an arm! The arm in the picture above is a basic arm that was made from a Simple Series puppet pattern. For our Simple Series savvy customers out there, notice that we were able to conserve fleece by splicing the Arm and Hand Pattern and using some scrap fabric for the upper part of the arm. You may choose to do this or not, but know that it’s an option and a good way to “stretch” your fleece.