Inspired by this simply magical post by Rima Staines of the Hermitage, the older girls and I decided that making puppets would be our Summer project.
However, it was a far more complex undertaking than I realised it would be.
It took from August to late November to finish our puppets in the end.
The girl's each had quite definite and ambitious designs in mind.
I wanted to be able to help them to accomplish these without too much frustration so the puppets really ended up being collaborative efforts.
I provided, technical support when threads needed threading and untangling and re-stitching.
They engaged, with guidance only in the processes that they could manage without help such as applying glue and paper to the heads and shoulders, cutting out the hands, whittling the sticks that hold the puppet's strings and stitching the fabric squares that made up the puppet's clothing.
We worked together on painting the faces and on stitching around the puppet's hands.
This little man is named Thorfinn after the enchanting fairy tale by Vivian French and Jackie Morris "Singing to the Sun"
His hands are made of wool filled cotton interlock.
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His gown and hat are made of two squares of cotton print fabric.
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His head and shoulders are molded out of papier mache.
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His strings are made of hemp twine strung to two hand whittled pieces of wood, kindly donated by one of the trees in our village green.
He also has a little bell sewn to the top of his cap of which he is very proud.
I wanted to create a puppet design that would be easy enough for the children to handle and manipulate.
This meant the design had to be pretty simple, flexible and weightless.
However, I also wanted them to easily express their puppet's character by manipulating it's movement.
I think this was achieved by using large squares of flowing fabric for the puppet's gowns as they gave the arms a good reach and lots of flexibility.
Thorfinn also, actually has two strings threaded through his head.
One comes out through the front and one pokes out of the point of his cap.
Using two strings for the head like this, allows the puppeteer to direct the angle of the head with ease.
Thorfinn can be made to look down by pulling the thread that runs through the back of his head while slackening the the thread that pokes out from under the front of his cap.
This gives poor Thorfinn a rather melancholy air.
But never fear!
By tightening the front string and slackening the back one his joie de vivre soon returns.
The girls' whittled the wood and rubbed it with my homemade beeswax salve.
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His hair is made of Merino wool roving and stuck into place using a non toxic craft glue.
I used my longest, scariest doll-making needle to stitch the strings through his head and cap before gluing his cap to his hair line with more copious amounts of craft glue.
Florence, as ever unmoved by the general chaos of her household.
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Matilda and I worked on this elegant character. Her name is Lady Elspeth Barley.
Boo's creation is simply magical. He is a Celestial Bird Boy!
Here is poor Thorfinn looking a wee bit undone.
You can see how we shaped the head, neck and shoulders from this picture.
To paint the faces we made up a large batch of skin tone in acrylic; One pale, one cool and one slightly warmer in tone for shading.
We applied the skin tones and waited for them to dry thoroughly before painting the facial details and sticking on the hair.
To make the basic head and neck structure, we scrunched up a sheet of newspaper in to a ball, leaving enough to twist a sketchy neck and shoulder shape with the same sheet to avoid having to stick pieces together.
We molded the face by sticking pieces of ripped up newspaper onto the structure with PVA glue.
The bodies were made by placing two pieces of fabric right sides together and stitching all the way around leaving gaps along the top and on the top two corners for the head and hands to fit through and be stitched in place.
On a roll of sorts I decided to use a similar process to create some cloth puppets using the Waldorf method for molding their heads.
It was certainly easier to thread twine through a wool filled head than a paper filled one!
More inspiration
The video above describes beautifully why puppets and puppetry helps children connect with their imaginations.
I love the simplicity of this Waldorf style Puppet play using marionette style dolls.
