Felted Puppets

Here are some felted puppets my kids made about a month ago.


Jeff (age 7) made the dog and it hasn't left his side since, except for a short stint at the textile session I presented in Saskatoon.

I get alot of requests for a felting tutorial and I have been reluctant in the past because there are lots of them out there as well as some terrific books.


These puppets are a little different so I thought I'd give you a mini tutorial about them.

When felting you need some wool fleece, I get mine from a weaving shop near Calgary called Shuttleworks.  I always tell potential felters not to buy their fleece from the craft or fabric stores as they tend to have outrageous prices for very little fleece.  I buy plain white fleece and then I dye it myself with Kool aid.  You get wonderful colors and your fleece will smell like the Kool aid flavor as well which the kids find pretty cool.

To dye your fleece place one packet of kool aid into a canning jar and add a cup or two of boiling water.  The amount of water you add depends on how much fleece you are dyeing.

Stir till the powder has dissolved.

Stuff some fleece into the jar.

You want to make sure it is completely immersed.

Let the fleece sit for a while.  Half an hour or so...when you go back to check on it you'll find that they dye has been absorbed by the fleece and the water will be clear.

Now to start felting you need some fleece.  An old towel to work on, some textured type mat to felt on to help build friction,  ( I use sushi mats, bubble wrap, or the anti slip shelf liner with the bumpy surface), some soap either dish soap or bar, some warm water, and some fine netting.  An old lace curtain from the dollar store will work or some tulle.

When felting you want to have that textured mat to lay your fleece upon and then the netting to lay on top of the fleece.  The netting helps you suds up the fleece.

Now when making an item like a puppet, purse, slippers or a vessel you need to felt around something.  It needs to be able to withstand the water and soap.  For something that is felted flat for a pocket.... like a purse or slippers you can use a piece of heavy plastic, something like the sound insulation layer they use for hardwood floors or that white spongy plastic they use in packaging around electronics and such.
  I have used rocks to felt little vessels like the one shown here in the picture, but I find rocks heavy for the kids to work with you also need a pretty big rock to make a decent sized puppet.

For these puppets I used these plastic cups I had bought a few years ago for Christmas.  They were cheap and they had a nice textured surface so we didn't have to use an extra texture layer.

To start you layer on your fleece.  It's hard to show in a picture.  You don't want each layer running in the same way but criss crossed over multiple layers.  For the puppets we used about 5 layers of fleece.  You can see what I mean about layering from this photo of a flat design.

    Once you have your layers on wet with some warm water and soap up your fleece.

For the puppets we used a bar of soap as it was easy to just rub it on directly.

When the fleece is wet and soapy place your netting on top and start your rubbing or friction.  I usually find it takes longer than the books say. The puppets probably took 20-30 minutes of rubbing to get the fleece to felt.  I let the kids take breaks and we just added more water and soap when needed.  If you find a hole starting to form just add some extra fleece and rub into place.

The tentacles for the squid puppet were formed by rolling lengths of wet fleece, forming little "dreadlocks".  We then felted them into place on the puppet body.

When the fleece is stuck together and you can't pull it apart it's done.  Roll your cup into a dry towel and roll back and forth several times.  Leave on the cup to dry.

When dry you can remove from cup, trim the puppet on the bottom and sew on some eyes, tongues, ears, etc.

If you find a hole where the fleece "moved" during felting you can just add a stitch or two to close it.

That's it.

Unfortunately I didn't take a lot of pictures during the felting process so I hope you can get the idea from what I have posted.

Paper Tapas from the South Pacific

Tapa cloth or bark cloth is a traditional  textile from the islands in the South Pacific.  You can see some examples of tapa cloth here.




In the school setting we try to duplicate this process using paper.  This lesson was adapted from my favorite book "Art from Many Hands" by Jo Miles Schuman.

The word Tapa is Samoan or Tahitian depending on what resource you consult and describes the border of the cloth. Tapa cloth is made from harvesting breadfruit or paper mulberry trees.  The inner bark of the tree would be beaten to release the fiber much like flax is beaten to produce linen.  This fiber would then be flattened or "felted" if you will into sheets.  The resulting cloth was used for clothing, bedding, and household items.  Special cloth was made for religious occasions as well as for royalty.  It was quite fragile so it was made quite frequently.

Before we can make our Tapa cloth we need to make some design tablets.  Nice thing about these is once you make a set you can use them over and over again.

I used pieces of foam core board as I had some in my stash but you can easily do this on corrugated cardboard from the recycle bin.

Now traditional designs are based in nature including flowers, trees, fish, animals and birds as well as the sun and the moon.  In Tongo these design tablets were made on large leaves upon which thin strips of palm or coconut twine were sewn forming the design.  Here we make ours with regular household string.  Pencil in your design and then using tacky glue, glue pieces of string into place.

You also want to make these texture boards which just have lines of string.

Easiest way to make these is to smear some glue over the board and then wind your string around the board.

Now to simulate the bark cloth we are using brown paper bags or kraft paper.

You want to take your paper and crumple it over and over quite a few times.

You then can iron it out flat.

If you want it colored like the yellow cloth in the picture above, paint it with some tempera after you have ironed it flat.

Most Tapa cloth is based on a grid design.  Using a ruler make out this grid on your cloth.

Now you want to place a design board under your cloth and using crayon in either red, brown, or orange rub to bring up the image.

Now use the striped string board and in a different color of crayon rub this design around the image you have already brought up.

Don't rub the stripes on top of the design just around it.

 You now want to add some touches with some black tempera.

You can use the end of your paint brush for dots.

You can use a piece of cardboard to stamp in a striped design.

Finally you want to paint your border black.

and that's it.  You could spread this project over 2 sessions.  The first to create your design blocks and then a second to rub the designs and paint the cloth.


Fascinating project and there are lots of resources on the web in google images.  Give it a try.


We'll see you next time.

Poppy Mixed Media

Well this is the Remembrance Day project I have come up with for this year "Mixed Media Poppies". 

Tape off your watercolor or white sketch paper for that nice finished edge and then paint in your background color with disc tempera. 

While the paint is still wet cover with a layer of plastic wrap and smoosh it slightly.  Leave in place until dry. 

While your background is drying work on your poppy papers.  You want a few types.  In this one I'm using thicker liquid tempera and patting it in with the brush leaving some nice textured brush marks.

For this one I'm using the liquid tempera like glue and squishing some red tissue paper into the wet paint.  Cover with a top coat of paint as well.  It is similar to the technique I used in this post.

In this one I'm covering the paper with paint and then placing bubble wrap on top while wet.  Leave on til dry.

In this one I painted the paper a background red, left it to dry and then came in with a different color red and stamped in circles using a small plastic cup.

Make some green painted and textured paper at the same time.

You could also weave some poppies using the technique described in my "woven eye" post.

Paint around the weaving to finish them off.

When your poppy papers and background is dry start putting your picture together.


Cut out some stems from the green paper.  Don't forget to add a pod or two.

Cut a large circle from some of the poppy paper.  Don't worry about it being perfect...in fact for this project they look better if they are a bit off.

Add a second smaller circle and then use a black button for the center.  Glue into place.

Add some detailing with sharpie and crayon to add that extra bit of emphasis.

I also made little lines to represent the fuzziness on the stem and pod.

That's it.  We'll see you next time.

Here are the Poppies Grade 2 completed.

Great work students!

Notre-Dame Stained Glass on Paper

I have a plan to do a large stained glass Rose window display at school.




It will be made up of smaller stained glass compositions by each of the students in either Grade 3 or 4.

When I was in Paris this summer I couldn't get enough of the amazing stained glass "Rose" windows.  This is one from Notre-Dame on the outside but when you go inside.......

This is what you see...it literally stops you in your tracks...the ones at the Cathedral in Reims are even more amazing. When you consider that these windows were constructed in the 13th century, the skill and artistry these windows demonstrate is truly awe inspiring.

Please click on picture to see larger.


Another aspect of the windows which surprised me is the depth of the composition.  The way the glass artists etched in the folds of the clothing, details of the faces, and even shadows for a 3D look.  Surprising when you consider shading doesn't really show up in painting much until Giotto's "Francis of Assisi Receiving the Stigmata" which he painted between 1295 - 1300.

The Rose windows were completed in 1270.  These figure windows were completed much later however they show similar detail that is in the Rose window I just don't have a close up picture to show you (the windows tower above you, so a little difficult to photograph).



MATERIALS REQUIRED:

-regular white school glue
- black acrylic paint
- tempera disk paints
- watercolor paper or heavier weight sketch paper
- paintbrushes
- stained glass reference photos
- circular objects for tracing
- fine sharpie

 Anyway...our stained glass will be done on paper in the method I first outlined in this post.


We will be concentrating on the round portions of the petals in the Rose window.

To get our round shape I traced a circle using a small foam plate.

I then wanted an outer circle so I took a larger plate and traced it as well....probably would be easier to do this in the opposite order at school.

I then used a roll of tape to get my semi circular shapes in place.

I sketched out the design I wanted,  I used the "Virgin Mary" as depicted in Notre-Dame but you can use any design of your choice.

Take a bottle of regular white glue and add a few squirts of black acrylic paint into the bottle.  Shake well.

Go over your pencil lines with your black glue.

Make sure to do this on a flat surface so your glue does not ooze where you don't want it to.

You can make some lines thicker than others if you wish.

Leave to dry on a flat surface.

When the glue has dried start painting in your sections.  The raised glue edge helps to "corral" the paint making it easier to paint.  With very young kids you can just let them paint the whole thing with a few colors rather than piece by piece...it will still look pretty terrific.

For the fine etching lines use a fine sharpie after the paint has dried.

Cut out circle.

I plan to make the rest of the petal parts with construction paper but the main focus will be on the circular sections.


That's it.

See you next time.