Latest project finished - "Stitches" from Animal Crossing

 

There's something about Animal Crossing that keeps my daughter playing, long after most folk have moved on to other games. Most of the appeal is the strange characters who come to live on her island, and "Stitches" is one of the strangest yet. 

It's like a weird little bear thing that looks like it's been crocheted (ironic, right?) so I thought it'd be an easy pattern to follow - and an easy project to make. 

I worked from this pattern: 

Ravelry: Stitches - Animal crossing pattern by Hi Sheep

(which is a free Ravelry pattern from Hi Sheep). 

It's a good set of instructions and thankfully it's also a great way to use up lots of odd scraps of coloured yarn. 

The head is fairly easy as it's just a standard Amigurumi 'ball' but the body is open ended (which threw me at first) - yet it works well for this character because you get a nice join between the head and the neck without the usual 'wobble' - so that's a tip I'm definitely going to use when I start developing my own patterns. 

Nearly everything else is crocheted separately, from the muzzle to the fantastic swirly two-part ears (again this is something I'm keeping in mind for future patterns as they're just magic circles made for 6 SC, overlaid then stitched all around to give them that cool dual-colour 'inset' look). 

The 'hair' was the worst part for me as I am hopeless at getting nice neat rows in flat stitch, and the instructions went a bit awry at that point so I adapted. 

The body is actually in three different colours but I only had one shade of white, and had to make the best of it. 

The arms and legs are great fun - about the first time I've followed a US pattern and got the row counts right (see previous posts on that!)

Lastly I added some cut-out felt stars, and embroidered the mouth (badly, I know, dang I gotta get neater at that!) and the eyes (which my daughter hates because she says it makes Stitches look 'dead' but hey, that's what the original looks like!!)

Overall it's a nice chunky little amigurumi project that took me about 2 nights in between other things, and ended up being a good solid make that looks vaguely like the character it's supposed to be. 

See what you think of the pattern and if you're a videogame Amigurumi fan, watch out for future posts featuring them, as they're my favourite kind of make.