Tuesday, March 23, 2010

It's Spring, the Lion!

Back in January when I posted Winter, I asked for suggestions as to what other animals I could make with my unnecessarily large stash of fun fur. Rayleen's suggestions that I make a lion really grabbed my attention, so now joining Winter we have his new friend Spring.

Spring was made using Bernat Satin in Banana and more nameless fun fur from Dollarama. I tested out my new Clover Soft Touch 3.5mm hook to make him. I picked up two of the hooks last weekend. I want to use them a couple more times then I'll let you all know what I think of them.

Quick Lion Tutorial

Like with Winter I decided to just wing the pattern. If you've ever made an amigurumi ball before you know there's always that point you come to in the middle where you stitch the same amount of stitches for X number of rows. When I got to that part I did the first of these repeating rows in Bernat Satin yarn and then switched to the fun fur for 5 rows, then went back to the Bernat Satin yarn for one row before beginning the decreasing part of the ball. It's a pretty simple technique for making the mane. The fun fur part is a little tighter, but you can't tell because it's so fluffy.


Each of Spring's ears was made by chaining 2 then making a 6 hdc shell stitch in the first chain space. His body is just another ball (six stitches smaller in width than the head). I stitched in back loop only for the first row of the repeated same number of stitches section to give him a flat bottom. (I was worried the mane would make him top heavy and figured this would help balance him). Finally, for the tail I started with the fun fur and crocheted 8 sc in a round until I was satisfied that the fluffy part was big enough. Then I switched back to the Bernat Satin and decreased down to four, and stitched these 4 sc in a round until I was happy with the tail length.

Winter, posing with his new friend Spring.

So, I think that working with fun fur once per season is enough, don't you? If you have any ideas for a summer animal that I could make that would incorporate a little bit of fun fur please share your idea in the comments section.

2 comments:

Sonya said...

Eeeeek! I love love love him!! He is so cute! I have to make one. Thanks for the tutorial. Your work is awesome.

Rayleen said...

He turned out so well! I'm glad you liked the suggestion. I really like the simple body style, it looks like it could be made into anything.