The Making of a PUPPET!
Alright, so the puppet is obviously cool; but let me explain how it’s EVEN COOLER.
My dad is one of the most interesting people I know, but I didn’t fully understand that until I was an adult myself. He grew up in Virginia, and then studied theater at VCU in Richmond (an interesting side note — we toured his alma mater together when I was in high school and I loved everything about it. If I went the college route I defiantly would have gone to VCU, but my life would be entirely different right now!)
After graduating, my dad toured the country acting with a group called The Alpha-Omega Players. I found these pictures (below) on his facebook, my dad is the one on the far left in the black suit. I also found that other picture of him, taken in Kalamazoo, MI! Check out his OUTFIT (I am so lucky to have this guy as my dad!)
Around the same time period, my dad started making and preforming with puppets. I have to get some more info on this time of his life because it all just sounds so cool… When I was a little kid, we had a huge chest of puppets he made but they were kind of just “toys” to me. We had so many different characters, sea monsters, an entire royal family… And I knew my dad had MADE them, but it didn’t really click how cool that was until way later. When I was around 10 or 11, my dad and I built a puppet together to look like me! I loved the process, but my dad did most of the building and I was in charge of decorating (hair, freckles, eyes). Knowing I’d eventually make my dad a surprise puppet of himself, I wish I had paid more attention to the building process years ago!
And that brings me to this project, a gift for my dad’s 50th birthday!
Bruno gave me the idea to make a puppet of my dad, so I can’t take ALL of the credit. We were driving to his parents house on Father’s Day to go on a hike and I realized my dad would be celebrating his 50th birthday during the Coronavirus. When my mom turned 50 in 2018, I flew back to Maryland and we had a party for her with our family and we all expected to do that for my dad as well! Obviously, this year was going to be a little different; even though we still plan on throwing him a belated party, I still wanted to do something special for his 50th!
The idea for the puppet was genius, especially when you learn that my dad made a puppet of HIS dad for his 60th birthday (23 years ago!)
I had my mom send me a reference photo of the Jerry Garcia puppet my dad made her (my family is COOL). The reference photo was helpful but there were some elements of the process that I just wish I could call my dad and ask him how to make puppet arms without spoiling the surprise! There were, however; some major benefits to figuring it out on my own, mainly that the final project is the perfect blend of mine and my dad’s crafting styles.
Some of the slowest parts of this process were just figuring out the logistics of it, but I couldn’t do that in my head so I just had to jump in.
I started with a simple sketch of my dad’s profile. I have some experience making stuffed animals from scratch, so I just tried to apply some of the same techniques here. Like my dad’s work, I wanted to have the seam running down the center of his face (this helped me stay kind of symmetrical when building the face). This way I only needed 2 identical head pieces. When I created the head pattern, I made it about an inch bigger than I thought I wanted all the way around so I would be able to round it out after connecting the two pieces.
I cut the pattern out of pale felt and sewed them (front sides together), leaving an opening at the base for his neck and his mouth. The mouth piece was probably where I struggled the most on the whole project, just because what worked in my head did NOT work in real life! That’s part of the fun though! So I spent a good chunk of day one trying to make that work. My first thought was to cut a mouth piece to size on cardboard (wrapped in tape to prevent bending), cover it in black felt, and hot glue the whole piece inside the puppets head. NOPE. I eventually decided to cut the mouthpiece to size in black felt and stitch it into place before inserting any sort of support. Afterwards, I determined where it felt best to hold my hand and glued the cardboard where I needed it.
Once I started to see the head take shape, I could’ve spent 30 hours straight finishing this puppet! It was one of those projects you could really get sucked into — a miss meals, hold your pee, “I just really want to finish!” kind of project.
Day 2 started the REALLY fun stuff — hair and face! I started with his nose so I could center the rest of his features, then sewed on his ears. I took creative direction for the face, differing from the reference photos of my dad’s puppets. I made his nose comically big and kept it low on his face, which gave him an interesting expression. For his eyes, I used small styrofoam balls (1.5” diameter) and cut them a little more than in half. His pupils are just black felt circles glued on.
My dad almost always uses yarn for his puppets hair, so I was prepared to use some variegated grey yarn I had on hand… until I saw this incredible FUR! Sometimes you don’t have a great idea until you see it in the fabric store, and that was definitely this instance! I cut the shape of my dad’s hairline from a piece of fur but kept the end untrimmed. I pinned the hair in place on the forehead and around the ears where it looked right and hand stitched around the hairline. Once the front looked good, I trimmed and folded and glued and stitched the rest of the fur around the back of the head until it looked just right.
Then, I got to give him a haircut!
It was fun to play hairdresser! I used my tiny thread scissors and tried to imitate everything I see REAL hairdressers do. I am both impressed with my work and confident that I am not cut out for the cosmetology career, haha! So I trimmed down the sides and back and kept the pointy bits on top, and throughout this process I just kept laughing because it looked JUST. LIKE. MY. DAD! To finish it off, I used a small dab of Elmer’s clear glue as “mousse” to keep that volume up top!
After I finished the facial features, I had to build out his neck and arms, then figure out how to dress him! I didn’t know what he was going to wear yet, or how I was going to make a puppet sized shirt, so while I brainstormed, he just sat on my kitchen table for about a week.
Puppet proportions are different than regular person proportions, meaning, I couldn’t just make a small shirt and slide it over his head. Also, I didn’t plan for this too well when I sewed his arms in place, so he wasn’t 100% symmetrical either.
I eventually figured out the best way to do this, which was to sew the sleeves in place, then create a shirt panel with arm cutouts and attach it all at the end. It took a good amount of trial and error, but I ended up with the shape below.
My dad has always been a Raider’s fan so I made him a “#1 Dad” Raiders jersey. I layered white felt with a piece of white mesh fabric to make it more textured like a real jersey. Then I added a little piece of black felt behind the neckline since my dad always wears a black t-shirt under his jersey! When I had the front of the shirt all ready to go, I wrapped it around my puppet’s torso and pinned it in place in the front. I still wasn’t positive I knew how to attach it to the sleeves, but I ended up figuring out how to stitch the front piece to the sleeve under the arm!!! This is hard to explain, but one of my proudest moments during this projects because I took it from “what the fuck” to “holy shit!!!!” in just a few hours. I finished it off by gluing some more letters and details to the back of the jersey (which nearly covered up my back-seam, win!)
The most important thing, my dad LOVED his puppet. He even told me he can’t wait until his office is open again so he can take the puppet in!
And I still can’t believe how much it looks like him!!! There were moments I saw him in the corner of my eye and thought it WAS my dad, which was cool and weird and funny. Making stuff is so cool, especially when it turns out just how you wanted (or better). And to think this was my FIRST ATTEMPT… I’ll definitely be making more puppets in the future!
