How to Make Puppets for Kids from An Old Sweater

Meet sweater puppets. They’re like a chic, stylish cousin to the sock puppet and pretty much just as easy. Plus, once again, I got a no-spend Christmas present for the kids out of this project. I am tempted to go all out and do a completely no-spend Christmas, but that would mean putting some of the things I am most excited to try (felt steamed crabs!) on the back burner….we shall see.

Anyway, I got this idea from this tutorial and I just had to try it since I already had the stuff to make it around my house.

Once you start making these you will be addicted! Each one only took about 20 minutes.

How to Make Puppets for Kids from an Old Sweater: 

I started with an old sweater dress that had a hole in it and one of Abby’s baby blankets (ok, it’s actually a spit-up rag) My sweater was more than 60% cotton, so I skipped the felting step and just left it as-is. (Only 100% wool will felt)

Cut off the sleeves (You only need one sleeve for each puppet)

Turn it inside out, straight stitch over the hole you just made by cutting the sleeve off, and leave the other end open. Turn it back right side out.

Cut two little round pieces from another part of the sweater. These will be the ears. The only difference between my puppet and the tutorial is that because I didn’t felt the sweater I had to stitch around the edge of the ears so they wouldn’t unravel.

Sew the ears to the top of the head. Make sure to use a matching thread because this seam is visible.

Finally, cut some circles out of contrasting fabric. This is where the baby blanket came in. I cut out the polka dots. You will need one circle for the nose and two for the eyes.

Hand stitch the circles in place. After this step, I also took a Sharpie and added pupils. It was so cute and easy I had to make two!

They started out intended to be mice, but I think they look more like wolves. I think I might just need to get my hands on some pink sweaters and make each big bad wolf a set of three little pigs to go with it.

They’ve even made the November TOP 10 in Iron Crafter! Click here to vote for them:

And, as always, I like to see how much money I saved by making them myself out of stuff I already had.

That means thus far I have saved $78 in two days since I didn’t pay $34 for a Pottery Barn rag doll or $44 for two Land of Nod puppets. Not too shabby.