I’ve often been asked where I get my ideas or where I learned to sew, draft patterns etc. The easy answer is that I learned it all in theatre school (in my early 20s), but I’ve been thinking lately that there were a lot of important lessons I learned at an early age which provided me with the tools and mindset that made that kind of learning easier later in life.

Probably the best tool that I had as a child was a book by Eric Merinat called Les Marionnettes de Papier.

I can’t rightly remember where my Mum found the book. Whether it was at a garage sale or at a bookfair – all I remember was that I’ve had the book for longer than I have been able to read French. The book is a collection of very well illustrated whimsical paper marionette patterns. What this book did really well was to illustrate how flat pattern pieces become three dimentional forms.  The pattern pieces were all shown on a grid and Mum showed me how to copy them out by hand and I rolled, folded, glued and taped little penguins, bunnies, ballerinas, clowns and indian princesses to my heart’s content. It wasn’t long before I got a sense that I could borrow elements from each pattern to try and make things that weren’t in the book. I did this with varying degrees of success. Some projects didn’t work out, but others (like my John Smith and Pocahontas puppets) won best of show ribbons at the Markham Fair. Even now I still find myself going back to this book for ideas and pattern shapes.

To the best of my knowledge, there was only one edition of the book and it is only available in French. However, should you ever come across it I would suggest that the pictograms are good enough to make it a worthwhile purchase. Every kid should have a copy of this book in their craft space and teachers would be wise to give it a try. At first it may look complicated, but trust me it took my cut and paste to a whole new level and gave me a head start for when I started to draft my own patterns because it helped me start to think of flat shapes as potential three dimensional forms.

Having done a quick search online, there are a few copies still available on Alibris.com