Here are the rest of the fairytale puppets – a king, a queen, a jester, and a knight. These were fun to make: choosing little scraps of interesting materials and trim.

I especially had a good time with the jester who’s made out of a few fat quarters.

Here’s the whole gang. That’s the dragon lying limp at their feet. I guess the knight slew him.

Here are the first two puppets I’ve made from a pattern envelope: a dragon and a wizard.

I’ve been working on this doll for a while because there are so many pieces to it – first the doll, then her underclothes and then her outerwear. She was made from Make Your Own Southern Belle Cloth Doll and Her Wardrobe. I’m not crazy about the book. The clothes don’t fit very well, mostly because shortcuts were employed. For instance, the difference between the fullness of her skirt and her tiny waist is accomodated via a drawstring, which creates a lot of bunchiness around the waist. That’s why I made the belt which wasn’t part of the pattern.

This photo shows under underclothes – bloomers, a hoop skirt, crinoline, and what the book calls a “bust improver” (kind of like a bra padded with falsies). She also has shoes made of felt. As you can see, she’s bald at this point.

The face is a combination of paint and embroidery. I made her necklace by twining three different cords from my stash together. It matches the trim on her dress very nicely. The flowers were bought. This was my first experience working with curly hair and it was pretty tricky. It’s so tangled together in the package. I didn’t try to make much of a hair style, being happy just to get it stuck on her head at all.

Now that she’s done, I have no idea what I’m going to do with her.

Pooh was crocheted from the Pooh Collection leaflet. The instructions kept saying to stuff firmly. I think I may have overstuffed him. I could barely get his shirt on for one thing. He came out pretty good though.

You start this pattern by making the arms and legs separately and stuffing them. Then as you’re working around the body you attach the stuffed arms and legs. So then you’ve got a leg butting you in the stomach while you’re trying to work. Once you get up to the neck you have to stuff the body too. You should have seen me with a decapitated Winnie the Pooh sitting in my lap trying to crochet around him. It was both funny and awkward. I did the last rows of the head with Pooh sitting on a table in front of me.

As I was working on it I kept wondering who comes up with these things. Sc in next 10, two sc in next sc, sc in next 12, two sc in next sc, sc in next two sc, two sc in next sc, sc in next 18 sc, etc. There seemed to be no pattern to it but somehow a Pooh emerges that seems to bulge in all the right places.

There’s something not quite right about the top of his head. The pieces didn’t join together the way they should have. I faked it and it shows. Maybe I was supposed to blow that piece up larger than I did.

Having now done a few stuffed animals from the Adventures in Toymaking book, I’m taking a break from it. Working from patterns printed on copy paper isn’t as nice as real tissue patterns. I worry what they’re doing to my scissors and it’s rough cutting through all the layers that accumulate from having to join multiple pieces of paper together to get one big enough for the whole pattern. Not to mention the aggravation of blowing the pieces up in the first place. Inevitably once I’m home I discover that I didn’t enlarge the snout enough and have to make a second trip to the copy center.

Next up: curtains.

This octopus was made from the same Adventures in Toymaking book as the elephant. The most fun part of making it was picking out the fabric. The fleece on the top part has little fishes swimming on it and the cotton on the bottom has spirals like suckers.

The worst part of making it was turning and stuffing all those tentacles. The pattern was supposed to be about 25% bigger. It’s pretty big anyway, as you can see, but maybe if it had been a little bigger those tentacles would have been easier to manage.

I got an old book called Adventures in Toy Making from a library book sale (actually got it for free because I turned in eight boxes of books for their sale). It’s full of patterns for stuffed animals. This elephant is the first one I’ve made. It’s asymetrical, with the legs being different on each side. That makes it slope a little bit, or else my sewing was just off. But it’s cute. I actually got the eyes and ears lined up pretty well so for once the face isn’t skewed. I think I should have stuffed a little harder. It seems like no matter how much I stuff I never stuff things full enough.

I made these four puppets from a book called Puppet Mania for my nephew’s first birthday. Really, he’s too young for puppets but we can do the puppets and I think he’ll like watching them move.

The book has a wide variety of puppets all made with “common household items” and basic craft supplies. I personally had none of these things in my house and you just try to find an all-white tube sock these days.

Mostly I learned that I’m not very good with a glue gun as I tend to get things glued on lopsided but since Noah’s only one, he’s not going to be complaining and they’re all cute in a very homemade kind of way. Here are some close-ups.

Sock puppet. This guy has the most adaptable facial expressions which makes him the most fun to play with but finding an appropriate sock was pretty tricky.

Turtle. In a prime example of not gluing things on straight, this poor turtle’s shell isn’t centered over his body. His head can retract though.



“Where did the turtle go?” This was Noah’s favorite puppet, mostly due to the large googley eyes. He kept trying to pull them off.

Generic monster. I don’t know why he has a wedge shaped mohawk. It just worked out that way. This design allows you to use one body with swappable heads but I only made one head so I permanantly attached it.

Rabbit. You put your fingers in the legs for this one. I should have used a longer pile fur as he came out a little threadbare. It’s hard to cut and glue fur and not end up losing a lot of hair at the seams.

This was a Christmas present for Noah. It’s made from a pattern except the pattern called for the blanket part to be about as big as a handkerchief. That didn’t seem right to me so I made it larger. I think they probably want to keep the blanket small so that toddling children don’t trip over it, but Noah will have to learn to watch where he’s going because a handkerchief just doesn’t provide the emotional support that you’re supposed to get from your favorite blankie.