Personal Project 1: Puppet Making

Personal Project 1: Puppet Making

By: Maxine and Flow

Instructions

1: Buy Fabric

2: Make Puppets

3: Decide How the Puppets Act 

4. Interview People at Convention with Puppets

     Flow has spent a few weekends this summer at different conventions. She went to one in July where she spent most of the time interacting with people with her puppets. Our friends started to talk about going to a convention at the end of summer. 

     At first we thought about potential cosplay options, but then we thought about making our own puppets, with which we will be able to interview & talk with other con goers. 

     The first step of this project involved getting together fabric. Flow has lots of furry fabric around, and this plan happened to coincide with a big sale at Fabricland. 

 

So with fabric all around the room, and cats in the way. We broke out the sewing machines and netflix and went to work. 

     My plan was to make a monster. I had found this funky headband that lights up in the laundry room (its kinda a communal I don't need this but if you do take it kind of place). 

So I got funky orange pattern and that solid orange which is CRAZY soft. Flow had a bunch of light blue fur from other past projects. 

     Flow's plan was to make a bird. This is the reference bird. Though he's going to be a reporter so I was going to make a hat for him and a microphone. 

     Flow ran into sewing machine problems, because every sewing project needs some kind of sewing machine problems.... (/sigh) 

This meant that after spending a ton of time trying to fix is she gave up and started just hand sewing most of her puppet. 

     Meanwhile my head started to take shape. First with a mouth and a place to put my hand.

  

Then I added fur and finally eyes.  By the end of the day I had a pretty good looking monster head.

     Where I started with the head, Flow had started with the body. The next day we continued and Flow shad a better day than me. She got started with her wings. Which look badass by the way!

I spent the day fighting with my body.. and getting frustrated every time I ended up cutting fabric and things not work.  

 

There were two major problems I was having. The first was making the body big enough to match the head... I kinda made a very big head. The second was my fabric. I real wanted to use that orange for the body but it just wasn't working. The fur fabric from the head wasn't blending well, so a new plan was needed. It just wasn't happening that day because I was to frustrated. When I was able to work on it again a few days later I was less frustrated. 

     I ended up using the blue for the back of the body but kept the pattern for the front, and kept the super soft belly.

 

 Then all that was left was to make some hands, a place for my arm through the center of the body and too stuff it.  

Yay Monster

She doesn't have a name yet, and Flow was going to help me put wands on the hands so that I can move them.

     Heres a bird head! I don't have as many bird photos because it was finished at her house as mine was finished on my own.

     Step three and four are yet to be done, but so far so good!

EDIT: Step 4 Didn't work out too well at the con we went to... it just didn't work for the type of CON it was and there were WAY more people than we expected there to be.... We will have to just try again another time.