Monday, April 7, 2008

Kid-safe kitten

Okay, I'm being the proud 'gurumi-ist again. I have come up with the ultimate way of making toys kid-safe (kid-proof?) by crocheting arms and legs into the fabric as you go, and it's much more secure than simply whipstitching. Here's the latest kitten I've done:
First off, I must explain the crazy nature of her colouring: it's a kind of "recycled yarn" look, like that Muji elephant I have. I did it because I had half a ball of five different yarns lying around; not enough to do a whole ANYTHING, but enough between them to accomplish something nice. It was a painstaking process to use this method, because it involved cutting each of the five balls into lengths of about 2ft, and then "randomly" tying them together as I wound a new ball out of them. I think the whole thing was worth it, though; I like the colour effect, and it got rid of A LOT of scrap yarn.

Anyway, the point of showing you the picture was so that you could see what the kitten looks like with "integrated" arms and legs. I'm sorry I haven't got a great closeup of it, but the joins look exactly the same as whipstitching, only because they're crocheted into the fabric, they're much stronger.

The idea is, you make the arms as normal; these ones are tubes with a circumference of 12 st. Then on the last round, only sc for half the stitches (in this case, 6 st), then ch 1 and pinch the fabric together. For the last 6 st, stitch through two layers of fabric. This gives you a nice, clean edge to your arm. (Please note, this is the same technique as Elisabeth Doherty uses in her book, "Amigurumi! Super Happy Crochet Cute", which can be found at Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk.)

Once you've finished off your arms and legs, continue onto the head and body, working from the top down, and when you get to the place where you want your arms to be, you stitch through BOTH the last row of stitches of your arm, and the stitches on the body. Et voila! When I finally finish the kitten pattern (I KNOW, I've been promising this for ages), I will do two versions, one for the joined arms and one for the kid-safe arms.

noisypitta.etsy.com

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Cute cat & great technique. This post was very helpful, knowing that the needle I use to sew on joints isn't really suitable for yarn. I am going to use this method to make my second amigurumi. My first can't be completed 'cause I have to use my teeth to pull the needle out. Proper yarn needles are hard to find in this country (Jamaica).

Anonymous said...

Oh, I forgot to ask if the pattern will be available for free. I really want it but I don't think mommy will pay for it for me.