Puppets – mouth puppets

Lucy Moore

These two ideas are dead easy.

A Snake From Scratch

With imagination and adaptation, this could become a dragon, a wolf, a bird…

You’ll need

newspaper, fabric, felt, sewing stuff

1. Make a paper pattern of a long rectangle with a triangle sitting on one narrow end. It should be about the length of your fingertip down to your elbow, and a good 20cm wide

2. Pin this to a double thickness of fabric, right sides facing in. Cut them out.

3. Hem the bottom edges.

4. Sew up the long sides as far as the base of the triangle.

5. Basically you now need a diamond-shaped insert to make the inside of the mouth. So cut the triangle shape off the rectangle and pin it onto a folded piece of felt, with the base along the fold, so that when you cut it out, it should open up into a diamond.

6. Stitch the felt diamond into the pointy end of the puppet and turn it right way out.

7. Add eyes (felt circles, craft shop plastic eyes and a felt tongue lolling out to one side. Vampire teeth are an option unless you’re working with tinies.

A Sock Puppet

You can of course just use a raw sock, but I find the mouth wrinkles up very quickly.

You’ll need

an old sock (pref. clean but not essential), felt, sewing stuff

1. Cut masterfully into the toe of the sock to make a slit across the width, where it would touch the tips of your toes were it on your foot. (nb make sure it’s not.)

2. Spread out the two flaps and use them to make a shape for the felt insert. It will be either a circle or the shape of an athletics track.

3. Turn the sock inside out and sew the felt insert into place.

4. Accessorise to make it into the creature of your choice.

For hints on using your glove puppet in children’s work, and how to make other sorts of puppets, see the appropriate Getting Going pages.

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