Peter Puss

I'm not sure why I decided to design a cat for my first crochet pattern. I don't really like real cats but I have always found cats good inspiration for toys. Perhaps it was watching Aimee playing with the knitted cats I made her at Christmas. Who knows.

I have always worked with things finished in my head so I knew what Peter would look like before I'd even thought about how to make him. Things don't always work out exactly as I imagine them but Peter seem to come together really easily and with hardly any trial and error. I guess because I've worked on a few amigurumi patterns over the last couple of months I had a good idea how to create the shapes I needed.

In the end the trickiest part was getting his features just right; head at a jaunty angles, sad eyes and nose in the perfect spot.

I'm really pleased with the way he's turned out and so by way of thanking all the other talented people who have inspired me I have decided to share the Peter Puss pattern.

I hope somebody enjoys making him; maybe they'll be inspired too.

Hooty McToot

I had arranged for Aimee to have a friend to play on the last Friday of the Easter holidays and decided, in case it was a miserable day, that I'd find a simple project for them to sew if they ran out of things to do. I had a good look online for inspiration and there are lots of  sewing projects for kids but it seemed to be just bags or skirts or aprons. What's fun about making an apron when you're 8 years old? I wanted to give them a project they'd be excited about, something that could be finished within their limited attention span and something that involved an introduction to the sewing machine and a little hand stitching. So, I decided I'd just have to come up with something myself and what I came up with was Hooty McToot.  

There's usually a very long list of things they have to play, make and watch when Sarah comes round and they get ticked off as there done, but on Friday there wasn't anything in particular and even though it was a lovely (but cold) day they decided they would like to make owls. I must confess I did use the "here's one I made earlier" trick to lure them in.

I'd picked some pretty fabrics and cut out the pattern pieces in advance because I knew if I let them choose from my rather large stash we would have been there all day! I laid out the fabrics and let them decide which pieces they wanted to use; there were no arguments - always a good start!  

The pattern involves sewing a few straight lines on the machine, some running stitches by hand and sewing on some buttons. The girls did brilliantly with just a little help guiding the fabric and with me pre-sewing the wings for them (because I knew they'd be bit fiddly). The tah-dah moment when we turned the fabric out to reveal our finished owls was fun.

All in all it took around an hour, which included a five minute break to watch a bit of a DVD and do some trampolining, for us all to make an owl. Here they are . . . 

My owl (right), Aimee's owl (centre) & Sarah's owl (right)

If anyone would like this easy peasy pattern I'd be happy to share it.