Re: Custom Kermit the Frog puppet replica!!
Excellent! Thank you for the additional information!! Awesome picture! "After all there's only one more sleep 'til Christmas..."
I started my Kermit last night based on the additional information you posted. Man that Henson stitch takes some time!! Took me the better part of 1.5 hours to cut and sew just the head together! I definitely see what you mean about needing to cut down material around the mouth plate to make the head look correct. I'm probably going to cut another one or two heads out and sew them together before picking one to move forward with. One valuable lesson I learned last night was to START each stitch at point that perfect alignment is most important. I made the mistake of starting the back of head seam at the neck, and by the time I got to the lip, I was off by almost a quarter inch. I went the opposite way for the neck seam and still had some drift, but was more easily able to hide it. This sort of skewed the whole head a bit, so I'm going to give it another go. When you were doing the stitching, how did you pin the parts together? Just how you showed in that early picture where the head halves are straight pinned back to back? I found it sometimes difficult to do the Henson stitch in that orientation. What were your experiences like? Also, how many stitches would you go before pulling tight? I was varying between 6 and 10, which usually worked out ok.
Other questions for you, if you're so kind to share!...
- For the eyeballs, did you just cut one ping pong ball? In one of the photos it looks like the cut might be slightly off-center, giving a larger eye than the other. Curious which spot you thought worked best for the cut - and also, what method did you use to cut the ball? I used an x-acto knife, but wasn't totally satisfied. I might use a cutting bit on my dremel. Also, what did you do to find perfect center of the ball?
- When gluing the fleece to the mouth plate, did you fold the lip under itself? Or just glue it flat to the mouth plate?
I'm sure I'll have many other questions - if you'd prefer I can message them to you - but I figured asking them here helps anyone else who is also trying to make one themselves!
Thanks a ton!
You’re welcome! I’ll just post my responses here, as it might help others too who encounter the same issues. My threads often end up becoming tutorial-like, so that’s ok haha.
The Henson stitch does indeed take quite a lot of time, but it does get easier the more you do it. Pulling the stitches around the 5th-7th stitch is fine—tends to make it easier to see where to make the stitches that way. After a while, I was pulling them tight after every couple of stitches, but it works fine either way.
The head pattern was the most complicated to work with. I myself went through half a dozen head pieces just trying to get it right! You’ll be able to make adjustments just by trimming the mouth area after test fitting. Sometimes it’s a test of patience for sure, but the pattern does work out with a little bit of coaxing.
Yes, pinning the pieces well is VERY important!! In fact, try to use as many pins as you can to ensure that the pieces don’t move, and then you’ll remove the pins a bit at a time as you move along with the stitches. I know exactly what you mean about the alignment—that happened to me quite often early on, and caused me to redo a lot. The only way I was able to solve that issue is by being more detailed with pinning the pieces together. Also, try to minimize movment on the fabric, meaning, try to not grab or bend the fabric too much as you saw, minimizing most of the movement to just the area around the needle. Keeping the piece mostly flat on the table as you sew helps with this. Just make sure there’s as little shifting as possible. The act of stitching naturally causes tiny shifts in the fabric, so things seem ok until you get to the end and it can be off (mostly if the pinning isn’t secure)! For the head halves, I did just pin them together flat. It is awkward feeling to stitch this way, but this was the best way—for me at least— to minimize shifting of the two pieces. You don’t need to pin super close to the edge of fabric; leaving some breathing space from the edge will help make sewing easier. The arms and legs for example, are just single piece, with the edges being pinned to form a flat cylinder shape, then sewn straight down the line.
Eyeballs: I ended up using two balls to make both eyes. The reason for this is pretty much as you’ve described! It’s not easy to cut one ball perfectly in half. What I did was cut one slightly taller than halfway mark, and then ran the cut edge across some sandpaper (200-300 grit works fine) until I got a nice flat, smooth edge. This also gives you more control. Shifting from circular and straight motions across the sandpaper works well, just don’t push too hard into the sandpaper as the ping pongs are super flexible and can bend a bit (but they’re also very resilient). Then I used another ball and did the same. Kinda wasteful, but at least ping pong balls are cheap! I found it difficult to cut through the ping pong ball neatly, so went ahead and did this. I used an exacto to first make an initual puncture mark, and then a pair of small scissors to make small cuts around the whole thing. Although, with the scissors you’ll make little teeth like cuts which is why the sanding is necessary. As for finding the center, you’ll see that the ping pongs themselves seem to be made from two halfs—hold one up to the light, and you’ll see a darker band running across the center. I just used this line as a guide for where to cut down to.
When glueing the fleece to the mouth, I did not fold the lip under itself; just pretty much glued flat to the mouth plate. From my observations of the real kermit, this is also likely what they also did, as it’s quite flat around that area; folding it would make it very thick. Since you’re using Antron fleece, you’ll see it’ll perfectly fine flat, as the fleece fluffs up really well, and even a cut edge will look nice and clean. I’m going to draw up a diagram of how to make adjustments to the mouth-to-fleece fitting. This is one of the more baffling and annoying parts of the build, but I’ve a few tips I can point out easier in a drawing!