Summer Project #4: wild animal felt hand puppets

In the quest for ideas for Little Miss' little friends' birthday presents, I came across these sweet hand puppets by Larissa of Just Another Day in Paradise...she is so generous she provides a tutorial AND patterns to make all the Old McDonald animals and even the old man.
But because Alexander (my little one's virtual twin, since they were born on the same day) rather loves his wild animals, I adapted the hand puppet idea and style to suit.
I slightly increased the original dimensions, when printed out the puppets resulted quite small, even for a child's hand. I also added a hem at the bottom to make them more resistant.
So, let me introduce you to a scary lion, a mighty elephant and a terrible crocodile (well...almost):

 ...and these are their backs.

Mr Lion is my favourite, and the first one I made...

 Mr Elephant was the one that required a little more thought to make, since he doesn't have legs / paws but ears, which couldn't be made from the same piece of fabric the body was made of...

 So, the first step was to sew on the front and back all the details (hair, trunk, tummy, tail...).
I then sewed the front of the ears to the front piece as illustrated in the picture. I repeated the same at the back.











I then sewed front and back pieces, right sides facing, being careful not to close the hole created by the ears (see picture below), as these are the holes where the fingers go.

 I then turned the puppet inside out.

And finally, I sewed the ears all around. Done!

And last but not least, Mr Crocodile...quite cute, uh?!























I think Jonathan, Alexander's dad, loved them even more than his son...well, I made two boys happy, so mission more than accomplished!