With the other Hill Billy character, I showed the other two that are alike with the nose glued on and low mustache, and his hair is added on the side, and do not forget the hat. Hats really do a lot for a character.
Any my pirate, the little black felt over his eye and black eyebrows—there is no white behind is eye to make him look more dangerous with his eye. And mustache, again, one of those is opened. I can feel his little cheek here. Let us then turn it over. I think this stitch is running. Joyce, if you are watching, you are a cool craftswoman.
Let us go on to the body, the legs and the arms.
Now, when we make the bodies, we can use one-inch foam, especially for the smaller characters like the babies. But my favorite is two-inch because it is very, very substantial and this is the mattress at the Topper. They have them in Sears’ and Penny’s. I think they are blue in Sears’ but it does not really matter what color it would be.
My general size is 23 x 23, and then I cut from there. You can tell by wrapping your piece of foam around the head and then gluing it.
I like 23 x 23 because I have had people help me glue the body the wrong way before. So you take the hot glue gun, this takes a while, and you glue the two edges together. Fold it, do it while you are watching the television or something, and it turns out a cylinder, like this.
You can cut it off, or you need to cut it off, but I like to fix it up, put the clothing on the puppet. When I buy some used clothing or find something, I make the puppet fit the clothing.
We have cut a hole in the back. Take a pair of scissors and start cutting. Sculpt the top around the neck area, so you can put your hand in like this.
Now, if it is a puppet—I am into ventriloquism more that I used to be, where I used to be a puppeteer—a piece like this. It could be longer. It could be your shirt size or how long your arms are, with your hand on the inside here, and we are going to pin our arms, and in the case of the puppet, you would not have any legs—or you could, but you do not need to.
Now, Joyce has made some—I have one body in here that she made out of unbleached nylon which works really well, and stuff with polyester fiberfill. A smaller body—and this is the body that I showed in the cloth-covered foam puppet for sale. I mean, if you will go and make something to sell, you would want to do a really good job that is glued on all the way around the edge. And then we add the hand, or we could put the longer hand to start with.
Now these are nylon hands, sculpted hands. Now again, I mentioned a soft-sculpture book that I have talked about before that are really a good reference, if you are not really addicted to sculpting. But this is nylon cloth, polyester fiber fill, and those books show exactly how do to it.
She just took a piece of nylon stocking and then hand-stitched it in order to make it look like fingers, and then a little piece for the thumb. This was sewed on the machine halfway around, and then hand-sewed here, to add to the body.
I have got short arms and I have got long arms. I think this would be good for this size body, but a shorter size arm would look better on a baby or a young child.
To me, there is no sense in using the soft-sculpted whole arm which is hard to make than the stuffed kind when they have got a long sleeve. And so, what I have done, and I had a girlfriend, Angie, help me with this…
Transcription by:
Scribe4you Transcription Services