[make] week 3: felt finger puppets

For Week 2, I was focusing on Horton Hatches the Egg.  There are not that many characters, so why not puppets?  Even better, felt finger puppets that can be made in an evening.

Hello Clementine inspired the elephant and I found this little baby elephant on Flickr.  An interpretation of this little chick created Mayzie and the egg, well it's a couple of ovals.  As for colors, I tried to match the original Horton Hatches the Egg book and used grey for Horton and his little Elephant Bird, red and teal for Mayzie and red for the egg.

I quickly realized after cutting all the pieces, my idea of  letting the girls assemble and glue the finger puppets together would be super time consuming. If you are braver than I am, feel free.  Either way, some directions for assembly.

For Horton:

Sew the base shapes together with the stitch of your choosing leaving an opening at the bottom.  I used a simple running stitch and matching embroidery thread. Use black embroidery thread to make his trunk creases.  Insert his brad eyes on the front.  Glue Horton's face to the rectangle base, glue his ears in place on the back of his face and then glue the back circle to his face, his ears and the rectangle base.

For Mayzie:

Insert the wings and wing accents into the base on each side.  Sew the base shapes together with the running stitch leaving the bottom open.  Insert her eyes and glue her beak onto her face.  Glue her feathers the the top of her head and glue her face to the base.  Glue the other oval on the back of her face and on the base.  The base should be sandwiched between the two ovals.  Glue her tail feathers to the lower portion of the back base.

For the Egg:

Sew the base shapes together leaving an opening at the bottom.   Glue one oval to each side of the base and to each other.

For Baby Elephant Bird:

Sew the three sides of the base shapes together leaving an opening at the bottom.   Insert an eye on each side of the baby elephant bird.   Glue one body piece to the base, insert and glue the tail and then glue the other body side to the base so that they match.  Glue an ear and a wing on each side of the elephant bodies again trying to locate them in approximately the same place on each side.

All done.  As for any additional tips, on all the bases except for Mayzie's, if you choose to use a machine for your sewing, I would suggest tracing and sewing your bases together before cutting them out of the felt. Mayzie's base has the wings inserted into it so it will have to be cut out prior.

Also, I started using fabric glue and ended up switching to hot glue.  Obviously if you have children assembling these, fabric glue would be the way to go.  Just be warned it's going to take a while to dry and can be frustrating especially with over two layers like with Mayzie's top head feathers.  With hot glue, it's instant gratification and I'm ALL about that, so that's my preferred method.

I hoped you enjoyed my take on felt finger puppets and please let me know if you try it.  If you are interested in my patterns I will be happy to share, just leave me a comment!