Puppets on demand

I am not a crafty person. I wish I were - I love seeing fantastic things friends have whipped up from a pile of beads or a few swatches of fabric, but most of the projects I admire are ones I can't replicate at home. Tiny, on the other hand, thinks I should be able to make anything. She's decided I need to learn to sew because her dollhouse needs several more blankets, and also a rug...it will need to be round, with plums on it. The one and only thing I have ever sewed in my lifetime was a dress in eighth grade home ec class, and it was so wonky and lopsided it marked another first as well: the first time I turned down extra credit, because it would have meant wearing that lopsided dress to school.

Over the weekend, Tiny told me we needed to make puppets. We've made an army of paper bag puppets, so I said yes, of course we'll make more puppets. Then she clarified: not paper bag puppets, finger puppets.

"We need cloth, mama," she told me.

Oh.

It turned out this was yet another Curious George inspired adventure: George once made finger puppets to act out Hansel and Gretel for a sick friend, so Tiny needed to make Hansel and Gretel finger puppets too.

Inspired by her confidence, I decided we'd give it a try, but with felt instead of fabric. I took her to the craft store and let her choose a stack of felt: two shades of blue, purple, cream, pink, green, giraffe print and black with sparkles. I bought glue and we chose an old glove to cut up (blue for my blue loving girl, of course).

I made Tiny draw me pictures of what she wanted her puppets to look like. I love her drawings, but she is often quick to tell us she can't draw this or that...but I told her I needed patterns for my puppets, so she made me four drawings: Hansel, Gretel, a pig witch and a self-portrait.

After she went to bed, I set to work with my stack of felt and a bag of googly eyes. I cut and glued and colored while we watched the Oscars, and soon I had the first part of my project done: four tiny figures to go with four drawings:

Puppets in progress:

I think pig witch might be my favorite, but the real question was what Tiny would think of them in the morning. I glued the figures to the fingers of one of my old gloves, but the glove was too big for my girl, so I cut the fingers off to make individual puppets.

Fortunately, my little puppet designer was very pleased with my work, and staged several productions of Hansel and Gretel in her shoebox theater after preschool today.