I’ve been asked if its possible to hand sew a hand puppet from our patterns. The short answer is yes! It is possible. The long answer is that it takes quite a bit longer than using a sewing machine. But you can do it. If you use small stitches and match the color of thread to the fleece and felt, then the end result will look just as nice as a machine sewn puppet.

Hand Sewing a Zebra Puppet

As an experiment, I completely hand sewed this adorable zebra puppet using the zebra adaptation patterns from my Horse Puppet Sewing Pattern. The horse pattern includes adaptations for sewing both a zebra and unicorn. For the zebra there are patterns for ears, forelock and the mane. For the unicorn there is a pattern with instructions to sew the horn.

Reducing the Pattern 65%

Since I was doing an experiment with hand sewing, I thought I’d also experiment with reducing the size. I’ve received quite a few questions about how to reduce the size of my patterns for smaller hands. I decided that 65% was about as small as I could go and still be able to work with the smallest of pieces. Maybe you can be braver and try below 65%, but you might end up with a finger puppet.

I have two blog posts that go into more detail about how to reduce the size of a puppet. The blog post How to Reduce the Puppet Size has quite a bit of information about different sizes of puppets and how to reduce the size by changing the scaling on your printer. Examples of Puppets Scaled Down 80% to 65% has more information about the comparison between the different sizes of puppets and how small a puppet turns out when reduced to 65%.

Deliberately Used Black Thread on White Fleece

I deliberately used black thread to illustrate my stitches. My hand sewing isn’t the neatest but I was surprised at how well it turned out. I did have challenges with getting the stitches tight together. I did a lot of double stitching.

When the puppet is turned right side out, the black stitches show more than if it were machine sewn. I have used dark thread on light colored fleece before while machine sewing and the stitches really don’t show when the puppet was turned right out. If I had used white thread while hand sewing, these stitches wouldn’t be as obvious. Even with using black thread, I’m impressed how well fleece hides a multitude of mistakes.

Free Download of Patterns for Stripes and Eyes

The Horse Puppet Sewing Pattern includes the adaptations to sew a zebra puppet but is missing how to make the stripes. This is because I recommend using zebra print fleece. When the pattern was developed many years ago, zebra print fleece was popular. Now it appears to be out of vogue. It will probably come back though, maybe.
I now have a free download of a pattern for you to cut out stripes from black felt to sew on a white zebra puppet. This download has two sizes of stripes. The larger size is the correct size for our Horse Puppet Sewing Pattern when the pattern is printed at 100%. The smaller size is for anyone who wants to reduce the size of the puppet for smaller hands. This size is 65%.

Tips for Making Quick and Easy Eyes

The download also includes circle templates to make a flat eye rather than the large cartoon eye on the horse sewing pattern.

•Cut the biggest circle from black felt.
•Cut the middle sized circle from white felt.
•Cut the smallest circle from black felt.

Layer the circles with the black circle on the bottom, white circle on top of it and the smallest circle on top. The black circle defines the eye, white circle is the iris, smallest black circle is the pupil. Sew all of the layers together, then hand sew the eyes to the puppet. To give the illusion that the zebra puppet is looking at the audience, position eyes close to each other and close to the muzzle (black mouth). Take another look at the front view of the zebra puppet. It looks like it is looking right into the lens of the camera.

This Mini Zebra is Just Too Cute

The zebra is sitting next to an empty 20 oz Pepsi bottle to show the 65% size. I have fairly small hands but I could only get two fingers inside the top of the mouth of the puppet. This is the perfect size for 3 years and up. It would even work for 2 year olds as long as all of the pieces were firmly attached and couldn’t be torn or chewed off.

This back view shows how I arranged the stripes. You can be as creative as you want in cutting out and sewing on the stripes. You could be even more creative with different colors. How about hot pink fleece with black stripes? That is truly wild!

Do You Need the Horse Pattern?

You don’t have to go looking for it. Click on the horse to go our store to purchase and to find more information about what the pattern includes.