I'm quite ahead on my holiday shopping this year. Turns out, this is kind of dangerous because I keep thinking of new things that I should gift to my loved ones.
I'd gotten a surf tee shirt for my great niece. She'll look darn cute in it, but I got to thinking that a tee shirt isn't a very fun present for an 16-month old. I started poking around the web, looking for a quick something I could make her and stumbled over a puppet Pinterest page. Bingo!
How hard could it be to draft up a hand puppet pattern, I thought. Well, after a few hours of fiddling around I determined that it was going to be harder than I'd imagined. I hopped into Etsy and found a pattern that looked cute and also do-able with the time and materials I had on hand. $5 later, I downloaded a shark puppet pattern that was worth every penny.
The pattern is from The Tucson Puppet Lady, who has a plethora of puppet patterns available on her website. Though I'm happy with my toothless shark, I wish I'd seen her website before I bought via Etsy. Her site has much more to choose from and includes very helpful video tutorials for each puppet. Those tutorials would have saved me from attaching this guy's fins wrongly. But, since he can't swim anyway, I'm going to leave them as is.
Like a lot of kid sewing, this puppet involves a surprising number of little pieces and can feel a tad finicky to put together. The instructions are great though, so it only took me a couple hours to go from concept to shark.
The pattern is written for polar fleece, of which I had none. I did, however, have a piece of sweatshirt fleece and a piece of ponte, both gray, hiding in my scraps closet. Along with some felt squares left over from my granddaughter's doll I had all the elements required. Except for the white felt for shark teeth. Hence, my shark is toothless. But my great niece probably won't notice that for a few more years.
