How to Make a Cat Puppet

Here is how to make a cat puppet out of an old jumper for free!

Puppets are fantastic toys, they are so versatile – and wonderful for the imagination. They also appeal to children of all ages and will become old friends. There is no need to spend a lot on shop bought ones as they are easy to make, and the finished puppet will have loads more character and individuality.

This cat was actually made from just the sleeves of an old cashmere jumper. The jumper had been worn and washed for years, and was looking a bit tired, so I was happy to make the sacrifice and give it a new life in this project.

How To Make A Cat Puppet

What you need: 

An old jumper, some stuffing, 3 buttons, black thread , chopstick, fine string

1. First remove the sleeves from the body and cut each of them in two as shown to the left.

2. Then cut the two smaller wrist ends of the sleeves down the middle. These four pieces will be the legs.

3. The other two larger pieces, will be the body, head and ears. Cut off the angled ends of the wider top part of the sleeves, and with double thickness, trim them into triangle shapes, these are the ears.

4. If you have a sewing machine, this takes no time to put together, but if you don’t it can easily be sewn by hand in a couple of hours.

5. Sew a seam (working inside out for all seam work) to make a tube for each of the four legs – leaving the top ends open for stuffing.

6. Sew around the triangle pairs to make the ears.

7. Make the bag for the body out of one of the larger pieces, leaving the neck end open for stuffing and a small opening to attach the tail at the opposite end.

It’s a great way to upcycle worn out jumpers!

8. Make the other larger piece into the head, this should be a smaller and rounder shape than the body. Leave a small opening for stuffing, this is where you will join it to the body.

9. Stuff the head, body and legs. Sew over the top of each leg and attach to the body being careful to line then up evenly.  Close the opening in the head and attach the ears, consider the angle as they will make a lot of difference to the expression of the cat – so experiment a bit. Sew the head to the body securely, concealing the openings against each other.

10. I wanted the tail to be more fluffy, so I improvised with a fluffy odd sock! Cut a long thin tube and rolled it around a couple of long pipe cleaners, to make the tail bendy. Sewing in the pipe cleaner as you sew the tail together, and insert and secure it into the small hole left in the body.

11. Sew the features on the face, I used green buttons for eyes, a pink one for the nose and stitched the mouth and whiskers with black thread in running stitch.

Make sure he has a friendly, smiley grin!

12. You could just keep him as a soft toy, but if you want to make him into a puppet just attach two long strings, one to his rump and one just behind his neck. Secure the ends of the two strings to a short strong stick – I used a chop stick – and adjust the length by winding up the string onto the chopstick to achieve the desired length.

This cat is a perfect prop for singing pussycat songs, or you could use it to play the Creep Mousie Creep circle game, where the children have to pretend to be little mice!

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