Princess Leia and Friends

Becca's brother, Peter, was born 7 weeks before the first Star Wars movie was released. Today is his birthday and so I made him a set of those puppets I made before, plus a few more.
To make Princess Leia's hair, I used the brown felt on the back, stitched to the back of the puppet head and then included in the seam where the body front and back are joined. But the hair back is not attached at the neck line.



For the braids I used 15 - 6 foot lengths of brown yarn. I tied one end of the bunch to a door knob and then braided them with 5 strands in each section. I tied off both ends so they would not come apart. I found the center of the braid and pinned it to the center of Leia's forehead along the seam line. I hand stitched the braid around her face, leaving it free just above the "neck". Then I wound each braid into a bun on the side of her head and hand stitched it into place.


She has real blush on her cheeks and a pink embroidered mouth.


Her dress is cut from the body pattern (without a head), slightly fuller and with elongated sleeves. It is made from an old white sheet. For the hood I sewed two rectangles together on two sides forming an "L". Opening up the hood, I made a narrow hem on the longest unsewn edge. This is opening of the hood for the head. Then I gathered the short unsewn end and attached to the neck of the gown. I used some silver gift ribbon for the belt and hand stitched it into place.

Her gun is made with two popsicle sticks. One stick is the base of the gun. The second stick is cut into 3 segments and hot glued into place to make the handles and scope of the weapon. I sandwiched the the stick gun in between two layers of black felt and hot glued those together.

The Storm Trooper is the simple puppet body made in white felt with a helmet based on the helmet pattern for Darth Vadar. Accents are in black felt. His and Bobba Fett's guns are made the same way as Leia's.

Luke Skywalker is a simple puppet body with yellow hair. In this picture he has a brown hooded robe, but everyone thought he was Han, so I made him a white felt jacket with brown belt, fringed his hair, and gave him a light coat of blush on his cheeks. Now he looks like Luke, but he is in L.A., just in time for Peter's birthday.

The Force and a 4 Year Old

This weekend, we had the rare privilege of having one of our 13 grandchildren visit, alone. We wanted to make it memorable, so Grandpa J., Uncle Isaac and I each decided to do something special with 4 year old Lincoln while he was here. I remembered that the last time I visited him, Lincoln asked if I could make him a Bobba Fett costume. I thought that would be a bit too involved with him here, and decided to make a puppet instead, something he could help make. With inspiration from this website we had a galactic weekend!

Lincoln also drew a gun for Bobba Fett. We used a laminated brown report folder cover and sewed it into place through a slit in the hand.

We didn't have any blue, so he painted some grey felt to give it that beat up look. Lots of hot glue holds the rolled felt into place.
We ventured out on our own to come up with a puppet version of Bobba Fett. We spent a long time studying the features of this character. Can you tell the most important part to Lincoln was the jet pack? He rolled rectangles of felt for this.
Lincoln was keen to sew on the sewing machine, so at first he sat on my lap. We had to make accommodations for the foot pedal. Once, I told him to sit at the machine while I ran upstairs to get my glasses because I couldn't see well enough to thread it. When I came back he had already done it!

His favorite part was painting the light sabers for Darth Vader and Yoda.