Examples of Puppets Scaled Down to 80% and 65%

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Even though our puppet sewing patterns are sized to fit older kids’ and adult’s hands, it is very simple to reduce the pattern down to a size small enough for a preschooler. This post shows what the finished puppets look like comparing sizes and how to resize the pattern for printing.

Decide How Small You Want Your Puppet
Size comparison. From smaller to larger. 65%, 80% and 100%

•100% scaling will print the pattern for a puppet at the size for elementary school kids with larger hands and adults. The puppet is a little large for first to second graders but it gives kids room to grow. Larger male hands might need to scale a bit larger than 100%.
•80%-85% scaling works great for preschoolers and elementary school age kids. A smaller sized adult hand will fit fine.
•65% scaling will make a puppet perfect for toddlers. I haven’t tried to make a puppet any smaller than this. With the 65% scaling the pattern pieces were really small and a little challenging to sew around tight corners.

Example of Our Pattern Reduced to 65%
Using empty 20 oz Pepsi bottle to illustrate the size of 65% puppet.

This photo shows the size of the zebra made from the Horse Puppet Sewing Pattern which was reduced to 65%. The zebra is supported by a 20 fl oz size plastic Pepsi bottle. The same size of bottle is standing next to the puppet for reference.

Puppets made this small are just adorable but very hard to operate by an adult. The puppet is perfectly sized for preschoolers age three and up. It will fit on toddlers but be aware to make sure everything on the puppet is securely attached so as not to cause a choking hazard.

Very small size of zebra mouth at 65%.

To give you an idea of how small the pieces are, this photo is all of the zebra’s mouth pieces sewn together. An adult woman can only get two fingers into the top part. Her thumb is in the bottom part.

Set Scaling on Your Printer

To set print scaling, open the print menu. Then locate the scaling or page-sizing options and adjust the percentage manually. More detailed instructions are posted here: How to Reduce The Puppet Size.

My pattern pieces are always at the end of the instructions. To save paper, you can print just the pattern and then read the instructions on a device.

Want to Sew This Adorable Mini Zebra?

If you think the zebra is just too cute to pass up, you can use our Horse Puppet Sewing Pattern. The pattern has adaptations for sewing a zebra. When we created the Horse Puppet Sewing Pattern many years ago, zebra print fleece was in style. Now it seems to have gone out of fashion. I hand sewed the 65% zebra puppet recently using white fleece and black felt stripes. I also made flatter, smaller eyes than the eyes included in the horse pattern. How to Make a Cute Zebra by Using Our Horse Puppet Sewing Pattern has more information.

Free Download of Stripes and Flat Eyes for Zebra

We have a free download of the patterns for cutting out stripes and the flatter eye for the zebra. This download has both sizes for either making the zebra at 100% or at 65%.