Tag: Stuffed animal

Brian the Big Brained Derpy Kraken

Making a little stuffed kraken that turned out more adorable than angry.

Way back when I purchased the dragon backpack pattern from CholyKnight, I also got a pattern for a Kraken plush and an Octopus/Animal plush. On Friday, I finally decided to make the adorable little Kraken.

I’d already purchased some dotted minky while getting the dragon fabrics precisely for the purpose of making something octopus-related. I thought the dots could perfectly represent suckers. So I got my grey fabric and some of the yellow dotted stuff and set out to make a Kraken with ‘angry eyes’. When I sent a picture of the finished plush to a friend of mine, he immediately suggested to name him ‘Brian’. Or even better, ‘Brian the bigbrained bracken’ [sic]. He also told me that mine is a little more derpy than the original, with which I totally agree. The pattern does not specify placement for the angry eyes so I sort of.. guessed based on where the regular eyes were positioned. Turns out that I put them a little too close together and now he looks derpy instead of angry.

He’s still magnificent and really soft. The eyes and spots are made of felt and stuck on with some vliesofix. Then I handstitched around them to secure in place permanently. The handstitching was done in a few hours while watching/listening to some old climbing competitions on YouTube, very relaxing. I may need to make another Kraken because I have some more dotted stuff hanging out in my fabric hoard.

Otter Friend

A friend of mine is a fan of otters and since it’s his birthday soon, I figured I’d get him his own otter. I used the free fluffmonger pattern for Squakers the Otter and hand sewed the small version in an evening while watching the darts. It only requires a little bit of fabric so that was quite handy. I only made two changes to the otter. The first was to make his ears a single layer, since they would be way to fiddly otherwise and the fabric doesn’t ravel anyway. The second was to omit the heart and just have him hold his own hands and an improvised fish.

You can also give him something else to hold, since the fish is not sewn to him. Perhaps an ikea pencil or an even smaller baby baby otter?

I think he’s really cute, and I’ve found that fluffmonger has more free cute animal patterns, so they may become useful in the future too!

Tiny Knits

I had to travel about 7 hours this weekend, so in preparation for such a trip, I downloaded a number of tiny animal knitting patterns. I figured it was more fun to bring a number of different balls of 5-10 grams in different colours, rather than one big ball in only one colour. In the end I managed to knit 5 little ones on the road and a pentapus before I left. The knit critters were  a crab, a whale, a crocodile, an alien and a pig.

All the instructions were followed completely, apart from eyes which were all made with a thick yarn knotted twice.

Teeny Crab by Amanda Berry and Teeny Whale by Amanda Berry.

Baby Gators by Anna Hrachovec

Mini Alien by Barbara Prime and Tiny Piggy by Amanda Berry

The whole gang together! I have some more patterns, so chances are that a mouse or a sheep or a chicken will join the flock…

Watermelon Hat & Doggie

Sometimes you (read: I) find a nice ball of yarn in a shop and you just want to have it because it reminds you of a watermelon. Then you wonder what you will do with a ball of very thick yarn in a colour scheme that reminds you of a watermelon. At that point ravelry came around the corner again. I found the Swirly Smooshy Chunky Beanie, which would require only one ball of yarn. So I cast on one night, size 9 needles and I finished the knitting that night. A very quick project indeed. It took a few weeks more to actually finish the project and add a little fluff ball to the top with the leftover yarn. In effect there is only about 6 cm of yarn that have not been used.

Another one night project was a little doggy with its tongue stuck out that I knit while staying with my parents. It found a new home as a present but it was quite fun to see if it would work. I think it did.

Mini Bunny

Sometimes you just really want to do a quick project. So about one episode of Castle ago, I cast on a little bunny. It’s 15 stitches wide and knit in stockinette to a square. Using the Bunnies from a square pattern, I knit up a tiny bunny. I’m claiming it is for Easter, but I just wanted to try out the pattern.

It’s quite cute, and it was a really quick project so that was nice. Who knows, he might get a family in the next few days…

Foxy!

Sometimes when you browse Pinterest for some other free pattern, something catches your eye. For me, that happened a while ago, with this one to be precise. It was a super cute, free, adorable pattern of a fox made by Misty’s Whimsies. You can find the pattern here. So I printed the pattern, and it sat around in an envelope for a few months. You see, I couldn’t decide what fabric to make it out off. In the end, I followed the cues from the designer and picked a red quilting type fabric with white polkadots as the main fabric, and a grey fabric with white stars as the contrast. The black nose was eventually made out of a bit of bias tape.. none of the fabrics in my stash were a black quilting type cotton, for some reason.

It sewed up pretty quickly over 3 evenings, the instructions were good, the notches matched and I was extremely happy with the pattern. So far, the only issue I’ve found is that mine doesn’t ‘sit & stay’ very well. Perhaps it needs some heavier butt-stuffing or something. Who knows.. All in all, it’s cute and the pattern worked really well!

Stegosaurus!

Do you know what happens when you end up with an overworked arm while knitting the body of a Stegosaurus? Said Stegosaurus ends up in a corner, in a plastic bag, for quite a long time…

A, mounted skeleton in right lateral view and B, laid out with missing elements reconstructed before mounting. Images copyright The Natural History Museum.

I did work incrementally on some of it’s yellow parts, the big purple parts mostly being completed in the session that finished my arm. It still took over a year to complete this Jurassic monster. According to the Ravelry, I started it in August last year. However, after knitting a big scale here and there to get back into knitting, I finally managed to get all 35 parts finished today! Then it took all afternoon to stitch the scales to each other and to the body of the purple giant.

Since it didn’t seem to be completely symmetrical, stitching on those scales was quite.. annoying. It felt like I stitched each one on at least twice, to much chagrin. However, they are fairly equal now, even if you can’t really see that on the pictures. I think a real Stegosaurus is also not supposed to sit like a dog, but since its legs move, I wanted to position them in an alternative way. It’s still pretty cute, so perhaps I’ll start a new dinosaur in the future still.

Baby Phoenix

For another friend I made a mini phoenix. He wanted a phoenix at some point, so I started collecting phoenix pictures on a pinterest board. I don’t think this was the thing he was expecting, but that’s fine, right? This bird was inspired by this baby Articuno by Ganjamira.

Anyway, I knit the start of a monster chunk  by Rebecca Danger (free pattern here) without the feet from a yellow fuzzy yarn. Before finishing the top of the chunk, I stuck feathers up its bottom and sewed them down. Then I added some feet made from red pipe cleaners. I cut some wings from orange felt and coloured the edges with a red fabric pen. Then I made a fimo head based on that Articuno.

To make the head, I used a toy eye on which I built the head, and then I stuck two toy eyes in for well, eyes.. I baked it in the oven, which may have glazed over its actual eyes a little. It was then attached to the bird. The bird was then stuffed and the hole closed. I quite like this critter. Look at his face! I’m not sure if it is fully in proportion, but at least it was nice to make.