How to build SAFE puppets for kids?

[guppy24]

Yeah, I know she is still little and wouldn't get how to play with it herself, but I thought it might be fun for others to play with it, with her. She has this cute pink flower bedding, and I have a puppet pattern for a flower that I could match the colors with. But maybe y'all are right and I should see if I can make it into a stuffed doll instead. The pattern is made for a mouthplate though, so I am not sure how to keep the mouth half-open when stuffing..

 

[Melonpool]

Due to feeling the pinch of the economic recession and the fact that my step son is OBSESSED with getting a Nintendo DS, I decided on the 19th to build him a puppet for Christmas. He's 9 and loves trying to fool around with my puppets, but his hands are little small for the full-sized puppets.

Let me tell you, this was the easiest and coolest build I've done in a long time. I thought I'd share a few of the things I did to beef up the construction for kids:

1. Use polar fleece. For a kid's puppet, polar fleece was fine. Like I said, durability was a lot more of a concern than hiding seams.

2. Shrink everything 10 80%. Luckily, I had patterns from the full-sized puppets that I could easily shrink down to 80%. This seemed like a good size for his littler hands -- and I was surprised how easily I could use it as well. I may shrink the next batch of puppets to this scale, simply because I have to build huge sets because the puppets take up so much of the screen.

3. Make the neck hole bigger. A kid's hand might be 80% the size of an adult hand, but yours isn't. Make sure that you can still operate it because kids will need a little instruction when they get started. Also, there's less likelihood that anyone will get their hands suck inside!

4. I machine showed practically everything. His seams are more noticeable than an Anton fleece version, but I'm more confident that he won't constantly pull a stitch while playing with it.

5. Don't use a foam body under-structure. I double lined a sleeve for the body. This made it a lot more durable and also made the size reduction to the neck less noticeable on the final puppet.

6. I ran a piece of rope from the arm rod, up through the arm and sewn into the body. I figured that the arms would probably take the brunt of the abuse, so the rope was another means of backing up the machine sewing.

We'll see how he likes it. Any more tips?

 

[staceyrebecca]

Ok...just because I'm a ninny. There's a new law going into effect in the US on Feb 10th of '09 that anything created for sale with the intended audience being age 12 or under (may be under 12...I'd have to re-read it without a glass of wine & a belly full of Christmas) will have to be tested by a 3rd party testing company in order to be sold in the US. Whether it's tested for lead alone, or whether they're testing it for all-around safety is also beyond my wine-comprehension at the moment, but I thought since this thread popped back up, that I'd give the ole head's up.

Its the CPSIA that you need to look into. Even if your item doesn't contain anything that could possibly even have lead in it, you'll have to pay for a 3rd party testing, which can run anywhere from $400-$4000 per item.

This is all if you're going to sell your stuff with an intended audience of 12 or under. so yeah...that's going to be rough on the ole preschool finger puppets I make. "Get em while they're hot, teenagers! 5 green & speckled frogs!"

http://www.cpsc.gov/cpsia.pdf

I think we can all say "Thanks Bush!"