Sock Puppet Quality Time
We’ve spent some lovely quality time together making sock puppets. It’s an idea that Floss got from watching the 2024 series of The Great British Sewing Bee – check out this post for more ideas for kids from this series.
This blog post will show you how we made our sock puppets and ideas for how to make use of materials you already have at home.
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Planning Crafts
As I mentioned, Floss came up with the idea of making a sock puppet from watching The Great British Sewing Bee. She came up with a plan of what she wanted to make. Here’s her plan below!
Being creative often starts with planning. It doesn’t mean the plan needs to be followed completely but it’s lovely to see the thought process and planning in her mind.
What You Need to Make a Sock Puppet
Sock puppets are all about your own creative imagination and using what you have a home. Here’s a list of useful items:
- A sock – Floss decided which of her socks she wanted to use.
- Felt, fabric, ribbon, buttons to decorate – we used felt. The main reason we used felt is because it doesn’t fray when cut and I thought it would be a good fabric to use with the sock for Floss’s first use of a sewing machine.
- Googly eyes or fabric to make eyes.
- Sewing machine, needle and thread and/ or glue gun. The aim of this project was to introduce Floss to using a sewing machine, however you could easily hand sew or use a glue gun for the whole project. We used a glue gun for certain aspects of this project.
- Sharp scissors – obviously care needs to be taken when children are using sharp scissors but it’s important when cutting fabric to have sharp scissors. I find it more dangerous using blunt scissors but I do always supervise Floss whilst she uses them.
- Fabric pens for decorating.
How to Make a Sock Puppet
The main thing you need is a little imagination for a sock puppet. For Floss I wanted her to have the experience of using a sewing machine. You don’t need a sewing machine to make a sock puppet but it would be a great opportunity to use one for a first project.
If you don’t have a sewing machine you could hand sew or use a glue gun to add your embellishments to your sock creature.
Preparation
Floss’s design wanted a spikey backbone to her sock puppet creature. We talked about how we could do one strip of spikes rather than needing to sew each one on individually. This gave us the opportunity to talk about sewing lines and cutting lines. Floss drew out her design with a sewing line in place.
I so wish I could have found my pens that you can remove the marks you make on fabric afterwards but we used a 4B pencil instead. Floss came up with a great idea that I will share later on how to hide the pencil marks.
How to Make a Sock Puppet
As I mentioned earlier, sharp scissors I find to be safer when cutting fabric as blunt scissors can be frustrating and cause lots of cutting issues. This is great fine motor skills practise too. Once you’ve cut out your backbone you need to cut the sock to fit in your spine. Floss wanted a ‘tail’ for her sock puppet so the felt was purposely longer than the length of the sock cut.
If you’re not planning on sewing – don’t cut the sock. You can use a glue gun to attach your backbone spines. If you’re sewing read on.
First Sewing Project for Kids
This is the sewing part! You can of course use hand sewing but this project was about giving Floss her first opportunity to use a sewing machine.
I chose a scrap of felt to use as a practise piece. The reason I chose felt is because there is a good structure to it and it’s easy to hold.
We use a raised platform to decrease the distance from the floor so that Floss’s foot was securely in place when using the foot pedal. It’s important for control that the foot is very comfortable and at the right distance to the floor. You also want a platform with enough surface area so the pedal and foot fits on well and doesn’t slip off. This is the one we use but I’ve since found this one cheaper. There’s also this wooden one but the surface is a little smaller.
Things we practised
- Switching the sewing machine on and off. I like that the machine we have switches the light on when you switch the machine on so you instantly know the machine is on.
- Raising and lowering the foot on the machine using the lever with her left hand and doing it without looking.
- Holding the fabric in a safe way keeping your fingers safe but guiding the fabric.
- Using the foot pedal and seeing how the pressure you use affects the speed.
- Using the felt to make simple straight line stitches. Stopping, using the hand wheel on the machine to position the needle in the fabric. Lifting the foot lever to reposition the fabric and then descending the foot again to continue sewing in a different direction.
Things we didn’t practise
Floss was so eager to get ‘sewing’ that I decided to hold off showing her some things so that she could get going straight away. These are things we will go through in future:
- How to thread the needle
- What a bobbin is and how it works with the top stitch
- How to make a bobbin and secure a bobbin in place
Once we’d practised we began on the sock puppets. Obviously, there’s some stretch in the sock fabric so it’s worth adding in a couple of pins to help keep the backbone and sock together.
Don’t forget to turn the sock inside out and invert the backbone so that when you have sewn in the backbone and reversed the sock back the spines will be sticking out the right way!
Sock Puppet Embellishments
You could add fabric eyes but Floss wanted to use googly eyes so we decided to glue gun these on. You can get some really inexpensive glue guns however, for an arts and crafts group I volunteer at we use cordless ones and I think these are much better. Cords really get in the way with glue guns and mean they don’t stand properly on their stands. This is the one we have at the craft group and on my wish list. Floss is very carefully supervised when using a glue gun.
We also used a glue gun to make a mouth for our sock puppet as this seemed a little too tricky a project for sewing right now.
Floss decided to add a tongue and some spots to her backbone using pens. It was her great plan to hide the pencil lines from the planning stage. She used fabric pens and Sharpie pens. You could decorate in whatever way you want.
Now you have created your very own, unique sock puppet. Floss has been making up her own stories with her puppets and putting on puppet shows for us.
Floss is eager to do more sewing. The next project is going to be a small pillowcase and I plan to introduce her to how to thread the sewing machine.
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As always, I would recommend adult supervision with activities and take care to ensure the items you are using are suitable for your child in both age and development.