What is this? A tutorial? I don't believe it either! I know it has been awhile, and I super appreciate everybody's patience with my blogging self! To celebrate, I have a super fun tutorial to share. I made these as favours in Wednesday's party favour bags. They are super easy and they look super awesome, you'll want to make a bajiliion!
I made these to fit on wee little fingers but they are big enough so that Mommy can play too.
You don't need much to make these but you do need Iron On Transfer sheets. I used Avery brand, I bought six for twelve dollars CDN at a local department store. You can probably get better deals on line (I'm thinking Dharma Trading Co.) but I didn't think of that soon enough. You can fit a lot of puppets on one page though, I think I fit thirty two on one page.
Materials:
Iron On Transfer Sheets
Light material
(I used White broadcloth)
Pinking shears
(optional)
Fray Check
(optional)
I love the simple kind of lists yes? Two materials is a great start!
Construction Instructions
Okay, first things first. You need to find the images for your puppets. I used images from the
Alice collection from Tainted Sweets at mygraphico.com . It cost seven dollars. You don't get a lot of images for that price, but you do get the images in PNG and JPEG formats. And, c'mon how cute are these images?!
When you have chosen your images, you need to re-size them. I found by making sure the height was no more than 1.75", it kept the width in check. You might have to play around a bit though depending on your images.
Once you have them re-sized to the correct height and width you have to arrange them in a document so that they print on one sheet only of your iron on transfer paper.
You can arrange the images super close together, almost touching each other because you are going to trim them within millimeters of the image for ironing.
Once you have your images printed and cut out you can move on to puppet construction.
Once you have your images, you'll need to cut your fabric so each puppet has enough to roll a hem and have a half inch in between puppets. I found for four puppets a 6"x 7" sufficient.
Roll up the top and bottom and press into a 1/2" hem. Then fold in half and press again.
Arrange your images on your fabric so that you know you will have sufficient seam space between each one.
Now turn the images over, making your they are wrong side up.
Press according to package directions. High heat NO STEAM and swirling motions with iron for thirty seconds did the trick for me with the Avery paper.
When images are cool to the touch, carefully remove backing. If you do it slow enough, you can watch for any pieces that didn't bond and try pressing it again.
Once you have removed the backing there is no turning back. They look awesome though so we'll move on to the next step.
Turn the fabric so that wrong sides are facing out and press.
Sew between each image along the edge of each image. If you cannot see your image through your fabric like I could, mark with a ruler where you need to sew. Sew down each side of the image, giving yourself enough room to trim each puppet to 1/4".
Trim (with pinking shears if you have them) and Fray Check (if you have it). Let dry.
Gently turn them out, a chopstick works well for this. Press lightly from the back. The puppet will be a bit wrinkly but it smooths out soon enough.
Ta-daaaaaaa! You have your very own Alic in Wonderland puppets.
A few notes from the author:
***To avoid turning your puppets after you have ironed on the transfers, you can opt to iron on images after the puppets have been sewn, trimmed and turned. I just found this way meant I didn't have to do any measuring or marking.
***If you are having trouble resizing and fitting your images to fit in a 8x11" document let me know and I will write a tutorial for that.
***If you would like to make 32 puppets from the exact same images that I have, I have my puppet layout sheet saved as a JPEG format, which I think I can share with you without violating Tainted Sweet's TOU. (The images cannot be re-sized any larger than they are and will be your pain in the butt to try and separate if you so try to do that, which I cannot and will not be held responsible for.) Contact me with your email address and I will send it off.
There ya have it folks. I think these took me an hour from start to finish. I hope you enjoy them! I will be linking to a few fabulous parties this afternoon, one of course being
My Crafty Weekend which will be proudly returning this afternoon after I have finished a few things around the house here.
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