Puppet Name: Leslie The Rat

Pattern: Snoof Puppet Pattern, Free Arm Pattern ( By Kreutinger Puppets)

Materials: Fleece, clay (foam and air-dry) felt, ping-pong balls, paint plastic from milk carton, screws, plastic tube, coat hangers, metal snaps, contact cement, hot glue.

Arm type: Double Rod

Features: Removable arm rods (rod pocket)

Although my puppets are generally easy to use, they lack accessibility in the form of portability. Their build is big and hard, making transportation difficult. Leslie was created as an easily collapsible puppet that is simple to use.

The eyes are rather heavy, rocking side to side when moved around too quickly. This can be used to a performer’s advantage by helping to suggest emotion. The arm rods also tend to rock back and forth in the arm due to the snaps spinning inside. The arm rods must be placed in such a way that the length is closer to the front than the back, making the rocking more manageable.

I used the ‘Snoof’ puppet pattern from the Puppet Nerd website. It’s a quite simple puppet pattern commonly used by beginners as practice. They lack features and structure in their bodies, mostly taking the shape of the performer’s hand, giving a snout-like face. This meant that the puppet could be folded into a smaller shape. The simplicity made creating the pattern and adding features relatively easy, allowing me to make the puppet look like a rat easily.

The majority of the puppet is made from fleece. It’s a higher-quality material than felt, although it is more inaccessible. I sewed the pattern in a way that made the fleece’s stretch go sideways rather than downwards. This was to allow the puppet to stretch and accommodate hands that are larger than normal. To make up for the lack of stretch in the length of the puppet, I made sure to make the entrance wide enough to fit larger arm sizes. The length can be tucked upwards to make it shorter and smaller, making it easier to manage.

The mouth is one of the only parts of the puppet made from felt. The side of the felt with markings on it is placed facing inside the puppet. Two triangle-shaped pieces of flexible plastic are glued inside using contact cement, which is more flexible than hot glue. This gives the mouth structure and a place for the performer’s fingers to rest without leaving indents in the felt, while still allowing the mouth to flex and emote.

The eyes are ping-pong balls with the bottoms cut off to make a flat surface to rest. Since they are hollow, I filled them with air-dry clay and Mae holes in the middle. When it hardened, it created a solid, flat piece at the bottom with a clear place to put a screw through. Creating a bracket with layered plastic and poking holes through, The eyes could be screwed onto the puppet with the bracket both acting as a bracket and preventing they eyes from rocking away from each other.

The free arm pattern I used are much larger than my usual pattern. This made them good for rod pockets, a method used to create detachable arm rods. As per normal, the arm is stuffed, barring the fact that I used scrap materials stitched into two pockets of fabric as stuffing. The hands were made with armature wire, sandwiched between sponge. The difference here is that alongside the armature wire, a pocket of fabric with one side of a snap inside were added, sticking out slightly. This created a space for an arm rod to be stuck and removed from the hand. The sponge was stitched into the fleece cover, with the pocket stitched around to keep accessibility.

The rods are made with coat hangers, twisted into a straight line with a P-shape at the tip. The other side of the snap is attached to the middle of the P-shape tip, allowing it to be attached to the inside of the arm. The choice to use removable arm rods allowed the puppet to be packed up easily without the burden of the long rods taking up space. Plastic cylinders are filled with air-dry clay and the coat-hangers are stuck inside once dry, making the handle.

Finally, the ears are craft foam in a pocket shaped like an ear, glued to the area the bracket takes up when stitching did not work as intended. The nose is a sculpt foam clay piece painted black and varnished, making it look shiny.

Overall, Leslie is a simple puppet, great for practicing with. Their flexibility allows them to interact with fluidity, and emotion, making them seem more alive. Recommended portrayals for them would be a crafty, highly emotional softie, face contorting with the tone of their voice.