You can find more information in my previous posts Part 1: Making the Head & Body as well as the Part 2: Making of the Mouth.

This is the story of how "Bean" the monkey came to be in our lives. Well, this is the technical 'birthing' part. The rest of the story will probably come later, if anyone is interested. Long story short, I had a character inside of me with a cute little voice and it became this purple monkey puppet. We did a few live events, took Bean to the park to chat with kids (who never seemed to even notice that I was there and attached to the monkey at all!) and visited a children's hospital to play with the kids for a while. We also did a filmed puppet show on YouTube that was lost pretty much forever when YouTube deleted the channel for reasons I can't begin to fathom.

I have found some of the raw footage from then and hope to find time to re-edit it so that we can at least have some episodes to put up on dtube. In the meantime, I thought some of you might like to see the process. If this goes well... I'm considering doing the whole project from scratch on video this time and reinventing the show with everything we've learned since then. I do have a couple of grandsons that I think would LOVE it!

Assuming that I can make enough income off of my online work and steemit, I might try taking that on again. It was an incredibly awesome thing to do with my two youngest girls. Memories with Bean are still come of my favorites!

So, without further ado...

Paris helping cut out the pattern for the white 'furry' fabric.

The Head & Mouth

First I sewed up the 'cover' for the head and mouth piece. Two pieces, this shape, sewn together with a hole for the mouth and for the neck.

Turn it inside out and roll over the reticulated foam head & mouth from YESTERDAY

The head at this step was SO adorable, I am definitely making a puppet with this final head shape at some point. It was SO cute... but not a monkey:(

Then Adding the black (adhesive felt) and the purple 'lips' (that I ended up removing later)

A pink felt tongue and I was done (for now) And yes, I look somewhat crappy. I was exhausted and needed a shower, but I Had.To.Get.This.Done.

The Body

The pieces were the same shape as the body foam core from Part 1

Sewn together in the same way, and rolled over the foam 'belly'

Line up in place with the seams of the fabric matching the seams of the foam.

Attach the head to the body. (I was able to remove the body covering and sew part of the head and body together with the machine. I don't follow directions well, so I often find myself going back and redoing things)

My "Mini Me" daughter doing some hand sewing for me... sewing the back of the head and body together. My hands fall asleep in about 10 seconds when I try to hand sew, thanks to carpal tunnel, so I desperately needed her help!

Ta Da!

We're done for the Day!

It has been a long day in front of the sewing machine and I am ready for BED! Too much adrenaline for me today. It is SO exciting to see this coming together so well!!