A few months ago I decided to try my hat at creating my own toy pattern. I wasn't trying to make something revolutionary but just something simple with simple shaping and one color. The little town that I live in celebrates a White Squirrel Festival each year and the owner of the consignment shop in town had been asking me if I knew how to make a white squirrel toy so I took up the challenge and decided I would make a pattern for a white squirrel. Above are Chris' and my sketches to try and determine the general shape. Evil Patrick is not related to squirrel making but rather a creepy manifestation of Chris' psyche.
The sketching helped me a lot with visualizing where I should be adding increases and decreases and was a great reference to look back at as I went so that I could judge whether I was really heading in the right direction. You can see where I scribbled notes as I went to keep track of what I was doing and, when it wasn't working, scratch it all out and start over. I definitely need more practice to get the hang of making up my own toy pattern. While I like how this turned out I feel that I hit a better cat note than I did squirrel. My next step is to modify the pattern to make a pirate squirrel like the one drawn near evil Patrick. I always loved making pirate monkeys and I think that pirate squirrels will be pretty damn cute, too. Really, everything looks better when dressed as a pirate. I think it's the eye patch.
The in progress and finished squirrel are below. I'm super happy with the tail although I think I could have stitched a Swiffer on it's butt and saved myself about 3 hours of tedium. In the finished product I also added a jaunty little scarf because the squirrel just seemed like it needed something to break up all that white. Plus it makes it look sophisticated and jet-setting and, really, don't squirrels sort of look that way in real life? Something about a fluffy tail makes an animal look fancy.
The sketching helped me a lot with visualizing where I should be adding increases and decreases and was a great reference to look back at as I went so that I could judge whether I was really heading in the right direction. You can see where I scribbled notes as I went to keep track of what I was doing and, when it wasn't working, scratch it all out and start over. I definitely need more practice to get the hang of making up my own toy pattern. While I like how this turned out I feel that I hit a better cat note than I did squirrel. My next step is to modify the pattern to make a pirate squirrel like the one drawn near evil Patrick. I always loved making pirate monkeys and I think that pirate squirrels will be pretty damn cute, too. Really, everything looks better when dressed as a pirate. I think it's the eye patch.
The in progress and finished squirrel are below. I'm super happy with the tail although I think I could have stitched a Swiffer on it's butt and saved myself about 3 hours of tedium. In the finished product I also added a jaunty little scarf because the squirrel just seemed like it needed something to break up all that white. Plus it makes it look sophisticated and jet-setting and, really, don't squirrels sort of look that way in real life? Something about a fluffy tail makes an animal look fancy.
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| Squirrel in progress |
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| Finished squirrel |
