Sewing Tuesday: Blue Creature finger puppet and his reindeer outfit.

Meet my new friends! They're called Creatures. This is Blue Creature in his reindeer outfit.

He's a finger puppet! Want to learn how to make your own Creature puppet in a reindeer outfit? OK!

You will need:

• Blue, brown, pink and beige felt. You don't have to use blue, if you want your creature to be a different colour that's OK.
• Thread to match your Creature felt plus some some beige and some black thread.
• A needle.
• Some pins.
• Scissors.
• Oh and a pencil!

Step 1. 
Body parts.
Draw a big arch around your finger like I have below.

Cut the arch out and use it as a template to cut out another, you need two.

Pin these pieces on top of your beige felt.

Cut around the blue pieces leaving a gap of about 1cm.

Cut out some antler shapes from your brown felt.

Cut out some ear shapes from your pink felt.

Take one of your blue pieces and sew a little face on to it. To do the eyes, sew a few teeny stitches on top of each other. To do the mouth, sew a string of back stitches in a curve under the eyes. If you aren't sure about how to do a back stitch, or any other sewing thing, have a look at my GETTING STARTED post at the top right of the page.

Step 2.
Sewing up the puppet.
Put the ears on top of the blue piece without a face and sew them on with a few little stitches.

Put the piece with the face on top of the piece with the ears. Make sure that the messy bit where the ears overlap the blue piece is on the inside. Pin them together.

Sew around the curved edge with over stitch. Don't sew up the straight bottom edge.

When you get to the ears, sew through them like in the picture below. Sew down to the bottom corner.

There's your Creature puppet done!

Now for the costume.

Step 3. 

Put one of the beige pieces on top of your Creature puppet. Position the antlers where you want them.

Sew the antlers on with a few small stitches.

Put the Creature Puppet on top of the beige bit with the antlers. Make sure the messy bit where the antlers overlap the beige piece is on the inside like mine:

Put the other beige piece on top.

Draw a circle on the top beige piece over where your Creature's face is.

I highlighted mine in blue so you can see as it was hard to see the pencil line.

Cut out this circle by making a snip in the middle then follow the lines carefully. Get some help if you think it might go wrong. Pin the beige piece with the circle on top of your Creature again.

This next picture looks complicated but it's easy really. It shows you how to sew the outfit together so that Blue Creature's ears can pop through. Creatures' ears need air you see.

Make sure you don't catch any part of your Creature in the stitches when sewing the outfit. If you are worried, mark on where the ears pop through with a pencil and take him out of the outfit.

Following the picture below:

• Start at number 1. and work your way up to number 2. tie off your thread with a knot as if you'd finished sewing. 
• Start again at number 3. sew around to number 4. tie off your thread with a knot as if you'd finished sewing.
• Start sewing again at number 5. sew around to number 6. this time you are finished! Tie a knot.

All done! Hooray!

Here is Blue Creature with his outfit. Next week, let's make him another outfit!

Happy sewing!

Holly.