Finger Puppet Making Kit – Instructions

felt finger puppets

Our little finger puppet Making kits are a great way to learn basic sewing skills. You can send away for a kit with all the pieces you will need to complete your own mini friend from the Etsy website.

Once you have received your finger puppet making kit, you can scroll down this page and it will show you a step by step guide to how to sew your puppet together.

Before we begin, you will need: 

  • A needle-preferably short with a large eye such as an embroidery needle or darning needle.
  • Coloured threads or wool for eye colour, mouth, nose, hair and edging.
  • Small scissors to neaten the threads.

To start making your puppet:

Firstly lay out the pieces of felt in the kit.

Lay the two largest body parts together. You may have a jumper, a dress or a tee shirt shape. These pieces are to be joined together with blanket stitch, great for finishing off raw edges!

Blanket Stitch

Knot your thread to begin, then loop your thread over the needle with each stitch
 

Continue all around the edge leaving the bottom edge open to pop your finger in. Next decide the placement of the eyes and the eye colour. In this case I have chosen green for the little french knot that makes the pupil. Make sure the eyes are at least halfway down the face to leave room for the hair later.

French Knot

If thread is wound round the needle more times, the knot becomes bigger

Knot your chosen thread colour for the eyes and push the needle through from the back.

Position the eyes,

push through from the back,

and wind round the thread.

Next, make a small stitch and wrap the thread around the needle three or four times.

Pull through the needle keeping the wound thread down close to the eye. Return the needle back through to form a small knot of coloured thread. Repeat for both eyes.

Now change the thread colour to red to make the mouth using backstitch.

Back stitch

Follow the numbers that show the needle positions.

Perhaps you can make your puppet with a big smile, an open mouth or a silly grin! Tip: draw on your moth shape first with a fine red pen and follow the line.

First change to red thread.

Stitch your mouth shape.

Now that the face is complete, you can sandwich it between the hair back and hair front pieces. To attach the hair sandwich we will use long stitch.

Long stitch

Stitches of different lengths to simulate hair texture.
 

Stitch random lengths to look like hair texture.

The puppet head will now slot onto the neck of the stitched body.

Slot the neck into the back of the head

Change the thread to the nose colour, which is the same as the face. For this we will use a cross stitch. This is simply two stitches crossing each other.

Cross stitch

Use a single cross to make the nose.

One stitch diagonally to attach the neck and face.

Another stitch across it can be knotted at the back to secure the nose.

At last! Your puppet is ready for action. Why not customize it with a name on the jumper in back stitch? Or some french knot buttons?

We hope you enjoyed our puppet project. Now you have some embroidery skills, why not make more friends!