Puppet Theatre

I found myself with two free hours this past weekend, and after tooling around in the sewing room for 20 minutes I was struck with a bolt of creative lightening, direct from Amy Karol and BTRS. I was flipping through the book, looking for a quick project that would be enjoyable. Something challenging, but not too demanding - something creative, but not another tote bag.

I found just what I was looking for with this doorway puppet theatre. The girls have recently started acting out Little Ms. Muffet with a stuffed ladybug and one of their play chairs, and this theatre will hopefully take that playtime to a whole new level.

I love this theatre for lots of reasons, not the least of which is that the height is adjustable. It is truly an activity that will grow with the kids (and adults!) over the years. Plus because you hang it from a suspension rod you can place it all over the house and it is so easy to store and set up. The pattern even has directions for an easy storage case, but I skipped making that for the time being.

All told this project took about 4 hours. The most time consuming part was the measuring and hemming involved. And the best part is that I made this one entirely from stash fabrics. My husband picked up a huge bag of bright, satiny, floral fabrics at a garage sale for 25 cents last summer. At the time I profusely thanked him, but quietly clucked my tongue, thinking "whatever am I going to use those for?" What a silly fool I was! The fabrics stepped up to the plate nicely alongside a thrifted white sheet. Oh, and don't let me count the ways I use thrifted or garage sale sheets around here...I must have a stack of 10 in the sewing room just waiting to be pressed into service. I had the the suspension rod in the closet from when we first moved and had some temporary curtains, and the dowels are straight from my husbands workshop. The only new purchase for this project was a yard of the fringe. I thought about making two mini buntings instead, but the fringe really adds to the formal theatre vibe. All that's missing are the velvet seats for the audience and a crystal chandelier.

I haven't shown it to the kids yet - that's my husband playing with the elephant puppets - but the next rainy day it will surely come out of the closet. They have a set of cute, cute, cute IKEA puppets just begging for a curtain call.