Building A Furry Pink Monster - Puppet Building Blog Update

wow, I haven't done one of these for quite some times, have I? I guess life (cleaning, enjoying time outside and novel work for NaNoWriMo have gotten in the way)

Anyway, yesterday and the day before brought some great progress - in more ways than one. However, it brought a couple minor snafus as well.

I had noticed that there's only about 6 weeks until Gideon's birthday, so I hopped to it and started the first of possibly four rod and mouth puppets. This fella is affectionately called "The Pink Monster." Mom, however calls him Elmo, you'll probably see why, LOL.

Well, I sewed up the body, and to my dismay, I sewed his MOUTH shut when I thought I was sewing a dart in the head. Oops! Thank goodness for my seam ripper - and I can say one thing is for sure... even for being hand sewn my seams are TIGHT. I had to struggle to take the seams in the mouth out!

Once I fixed that I moved on to sew the rest of the body. I was aware that I should have sewn the darts in the head prior to pinning but I didn't want to re-pin again, so I'd deal. Pinning this guy was an ordeal. The fabric is silky and slippery and I had to shove the fur inside the seam - only to have it shift and stick out in the seam anyway. I figured oh well, he's hairy enough... what's a few pieces stuck in the seam? There wasn't much avoiding it, so I'd deal.

By yesterday afternoon I had a fully sewn body.... but you see that? The dart wasn't sewn right. It's hard to see what pieces go where when it's inside out and pinned to the other side. I'm not surprised.


But as you can see, it fixed without any real issues. :)


Then I went to set up some eye choices. I put the eyes and gems on with scrapbooking tape since I didn't want anything permanent before I'd decided what I wanted. I laid them all out to see side by side which looked best on the fur.

There were five choices in all. Three with different sized googly eyes and two with gem eyes. I had chosen the red since that's Gideon's favorite color, despite it clashing with the pink fur.






















Then I tried the mouth on for size.


I balanced the eyes on the head - not glued, so this was a tricky feat... and saw his character coming out already. The mouth is also just set in there at this point and not glued. In fact, of you look close you can see my fingers in there, LOL










Clint was on the computer, so I decided to goof around a bit with the puppet now that he had a face and character.

All of these shots are taken with a shaky left hand, so forgive the poor quality.

Hamming it up by the fish.




lol. This shot was done upside down because it was physically easier to reach the button with my left  hand. I had intended to rotate it when publishing, but it cracked me up too much, so I decided to leave it. It fits with his character, don't you think?


Then I wondered... the wings. Would the wings work? I plan to do another like this, but it'll have purple marabou hair (this one will have red, because of the boas I had as options he wanted red instead... though he has no idea what he was picking it for, LOL)

I'm not sure about the wings. What do you think? I guess the proportions aren't too bad, however they are stiff (they are thick wire) and large. Of course the wings will be set so they are removable, so maybe it'll be just fine.


I'm debating on making the eyes movable/blinking. I had planned to have the eyes set into the head, but now I kinda like them bugging out. Though, with them on top of the head rather than set in I'd not be able to rig them up as moving - or at least I don't think so, unless I think up another plan, and I very well could do just that.

I'm also thinking I want a black mouth with a red/pink tongue. If I can find the material (rubber) in black, that is.

So, there you have it. The pink furry monster. Now I need to glue the mouth and eyes all in place. Then on to more sewing - ears, arms, legs, etc.