The simplest thing to do is to make clothes for your puppet that you can easily remove. For example all of the clothes on Doc are removable. The lab coat can be removed (actually, only once I’ve removed the hands, but that’s a simple matter of pulling away the hot glue that attaches the hands to the rope inside the arms), and then the shirt can be unbuttoned and removed. The pants can then be taken off, as they have elastic braces to keep them up and on the body. For Jeff, the pants are similarly made, but the shirt has press studs at the back for easy removal. [Please note, I’m currently updating my photos. Images can be found in my gallery, just hunt for the muppet-type looking puppets, or check out the video linked below]

Basically, any piece of clothing should have a mechanism, such as zippers, press studs or velcro, so that you can undress the puppet at any time. Some puppet makers do use ‘tacking’, a sewing method of stitching two pieces of material together that can be unpicked at a moment’s notice. I used this method on the dress for Amy.

By making clothing easy to take off, you can make costume changes to puppets during shows, clean the clothing or puppet, as well as make repairs to either the costumes or the puppet itself.

But what if the puppet is already clothed and there’s no way to remove the clothing easily? My suggestion is to carefully unpick the seams of the clothing, undress the puppet, and then use some basic sewing skills to install the mechanisms mentioned above. If you don’t like the costume, you can always just cut away (being careful of course, not to damage the puppet itself) and then replace the clothing as you see fit. 

If you’re making a puppet for a particular show, you may want to dress the puppet for that performance, and not make any accommodations for change. However, you’ll get more use out of your puppets (particularly if they are generic enough to work across a range of performances or storylines) if you can dress them differently. Amy, linked above, was dressed differently for my show, City Head, than she was for a corporate video. She got a new wig, a new dress and shoes. All of which I can easily change back again…

(On a side note, wigs are different, and I’ll talk about those separately later)

Read more on how to make clothing; why there are no free costume patterns for puppets; where to buy puppet costumes.