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johnhuebbe
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- Nov 26, 2015
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So, I bought a photo puppet of Kermit off of eBay to give as a Christmas gift to my brother and his fiancée. After I received it I thought to myself, wouldn't it be nice to have a real puppet to play with. That's when I got the idea to make one myself.
Originally I stumbled onto this forum after seeing Slackbot's photos of her Fraggles over at Deviantart. (Which are amazing) So I used a lot of her ideas for making my first puppet.
Here are a few photos of the completed muppet. I'll try and post more photos later.
For the puppet construction I didn't use the best materials, since I figured I'd mess up a bunch. I did buy antron fleece and better foam for my next one. For my first puppet I just used 1/2" green foam and blizzard fleece from the fabric store.
I did have to dye some faux fur by boiling it in a large pot with some synthetic dye. I tested a few scraps first to get the color I wanted. That took about 4 tries.
The shirt is just jersey material that I painted strips onto. The sleeves are a bit too short. Although in the photo they look worse. The arms (attached to the fur) are pulling away from the body foam a bit. To fix that I connected the foam to the fur at the arms.
The hair is dyed ostrich feathers. I cut them off of the main large feather and bundled them up using thread. Then I hot glued them onto the head. That took a long time to do, but well worth it.
The hard plastic eyes I got from Out of the Box Puppets. They came super fast in the mail. I covered the back of them with some foam balls that I cut in half (bought from PuppetPieShop on etsy)
The hands have pockets sewn into them for arm rods (not shown). For my next puppet I think I'll add in some high strength magnets to the hands & body, so I could pose the arms when the rods are not attached.
The mouth plate is flat rubber from the hardware store (plumbing section) with felt covering it. I sewed the fleece to the felt so it looks nice. It makes for a nice lip on the mouth. The top of the mouth has some elastic sewn into it so make it easier to use. My fingers then have a good grip to talk and post the mouth. I should have sewn a small piece of elastic to the bottom mouth plate (that will be a future improvement.
Overall I'm happy with my first try. I've never really sewn before. Only straight lines making simple stuff like curtains. The head and arms were hand sewn. The body and legs were sewn with a sewing machine, since I figured they wouldn't be seen much.
I still need to make Gobo's jacket.
I'll most likely make more Fraggles, but I'll take more time to try and make them more accurate.
Originally I stumbled onto this forum after seeing Slackbot's photos of her Fraggles over at Deviantart. (Which are amazing) So I used a lot of her ideas for making my first puppet.
Here are a few photos of the completed muppet. I'll try and post more photos later.
For the puppet construction I didn't use the best materials, since I figured I'd mess up a bunch. I did buy antron fleece and better foam for my next one. For my first puppet I just used 1/2" green foam and blizzard fleece from the fabric store.
I did have to dye some faux fur by boiling it in a large pot with some synthetic dye. I tested a few scraps first to get the color I wanted. That took about 4 tries.
The shirt is just jersey material that I painted strips onto. The sleeves are a bit too short. Although in the photo they look worse. The arms (attached to the fur) are pulling away from the body foam a bit. To fix that I connected the foam to the fur at the arms.
The hair is dyed ostrich feathers. I cut them off of the main large feather and bundled them up using thread. Then I hot glued them onto the head. That took a long time to do, but well worth it.
The hard plastic eyes I got from Out of the Box Puppets. They came super fast in the mail. I covered the back of them with some foam balls that I cut in half (bought from PuppetPieShop on etsy)
The hands have pockets sewn into them for arm rods (not shown). For my next puppet I think I'll add in some high strength magnets to the hands & body, so I could pose the arms when the rods are not attached.
The mouth plate is flat rubber from the hardware store (plumbing section) with felt covering it. I sewed the fleece to the felt so it looks nice. It makes for a nice lip on the mouth. The top of the mouth has some elastic sewn into it so make it easier to use. My fingers then have a good grip to talk and post the mouth. I should have sewn a small piece of elastic to the bottom mouth plate (that will be a future improvement.
Overall I'm happy with my first try. I've never really sewn before. Only straight lines making simple stuff like curtains. The head and arms were hand sewn. The body and legs were sewn with a sewing machine, since I figured they wouldn't be seen much.
I still need to make Gobo's jacket.
I'll most likely make more Fraggles, but I'll take more time to try and make them more accurate.
