Seven Amazing Amigurumi Cartoon Characters

I have been having a blast lately finding some of the best crochet patterns on Etsy and Pinterest. I have really been impressed by the amazing designers who create doll patterns inspired by cartoon characters. There are so many wonderful craft patterns out there to check out. If you don’t want to go research and find them on your own, you can enjoy what I’ve found in this great round up!

*Disclosure: some of the following links are affiliate links, meaning if you click on them and buy something, you don’t pay any extra, but I may get a small commission.*

Charlie Brown – Doesn’t he look great? All those times you felt bad for poor ol’ Chuck; now you can just give him a hug and make him feel better.

Crochet pattern for Charlie Brown doll

The Snorks – I love this cartoon when I was a kid and it always felt like no one else even remembered that it existed. It did exist! My mom even made me a birthday cake shaped like a Snork one year! And this crochet pattern proves that other people remember too!

The Snorks! Amigurumi Doll Pattern

Just in time for the upcoming movie release… make your own Peter Rabbit stuffed toy!

Peter Rabbit Amigurumi Crochet Pattern

Dory – This is such a great pattern for this lovable, forgetful fish.

Finding Nemo Dory Crochet Toy Pattern

Classic Alice in Wonderland character, the White Rabbit, that started it all.

Disney's Alice in Wonderland White Rabbit crochet doll pattern

Another classic cartoon character to crochet, Bambi’s best friend, Thumper.

Thumper amigurumi pattern from Disney's Bambi

My family and I loved the movie Inside Out. We tried to convince the kids it would be amazing to go as all the emotions from the movie for Halloween that fall, but alas, no one wanted to be Sadness.  Both my youngest and my husband wanted to go as Anger. I’ll let you make of that what you like.

Inside Out's Sadness Doll Free Crochet Pattern

If you’re looking for more great Handmade Disney patterns, you should check out my Pinterest board, dedicated to Handmade Disney stuff!

Thumper! Oh my goodness! He's such a perfect replica! Thumper stuffed toys are so hard to find! This is great! What an adorable crochet amigurumi pattern to make this sweet toy! Check out this collection of craft evangelist's finds

Five of the Best Amigurumi Animals to Crochet

5 Adorable Amigurumi Animals to Crochet. A crochet pattern round up by craft evangelist
Adorable Amigurumi Animals

One of my favourite crafts is crocheting. I learned to crochet from a friend in college, even though my mom had tried to teach me when I was a little younger. I don’t know what was wrong with me, but I kinda see the same spirit in my daughter, so maybe it’s a weird I-don’t-want-my-mother-to-teach-me-anything trait that runs in our family. Sorry, mom! I love ya, I was just weird.

My first project was a scarf, the gauge of which was tight beyond belief, but I got that sorted out and then crocheted a large blanket in a matter of days for my friend in time for Christmas. I’m pretty sure I just parked myself on the couch at my parents’ house when I was home for Christmas and crocheted for three days straight.

Later I learned how to make mittens from another friend and the rest is history, I guess. Once I learned how to increase and decrease, I had the basics for AMIGURUMI! It’s so fun! You can make stuffies! And potatoes with eyes! (haha). Since then I have made a lot of fun stuffed things. Like this banana.

Lately, I have been scouring the internet finding the best and cutest amigurumi stuffies to crochet. (Check out my amigurumi Pinterest board!) As much as I sometimes try to make up my own patterns, I’m not really a pattern writer (maybe one day…) and the time it takes for a pattern writer to test and create a new pattern is definitely worth the cost of some of the paid patterns available. Here are some of my favourites I’ve found recently.

Look at this amazing owl pattern! I love the detail on the belly (breast? what do you call that part of a bird?) So sweet. Owls are great. This pattern is a free Ravelry download.

Cuddle Me Fox — and check out this tiny fox pattern! So cute! Foxes are really trendy right now and this little guy looks like he’ll come together quickly. This little guy is available on amigurumi.today as a free pattern.

What a sweet crocheted fox pattern! Fits in your hand!

Boxy Bear is another free pattern for a new crocheter. Nice straight seams. I love the way he comes together. Really cute.


Isn’t this little Monkey pattern cute? This pattern is available from allaboutami; it was published last year in honour of 2016, the Chinese year of the Monkey. If you’d like a nice printable version of the pattern, it’s available for a small fee here.

Cute animal studies to crochet!

Tourist Giraffe This little giraffe is named Kenny and he comes with a camera!!! How cute is that? I love this little giraffe! He’d make a great gift to crochet!

That’s my quick little round-up of some of my favourite stuffed animals to crochet. Pick one and find your hook and happy crocheting!

6 of the Cutest Hats to Crochet this Fall

Check out these super-cute crocheted hats, perfect to crochet for fall! I love the plaid one! Great find by #craftevangelist #crochet #pattern #yarn #hats #crafts #fall

Winter has descended on Alberta, so all of a sudden I feel like it’s time to crochet! I’ve rounded up some of my favourite crochet hat patterns and most of them are FREE!

Sweet plaid crochet hat

I am in love with this sweet pattern from Whistle & Ivy and I’m excited to try it out.

Sweet crocheted slouchy hat pattern

This hat is another favourite. It’s for sale on Etsy by PrettyDarnAdorable and I must agree… it’s pretty darn adorable.

Free Slouchy LL Bean Copy Cat Crochet Pattern

This slouchy LL Bean Copy Cat crochet pattern by Meg Made With Love is also on my list of hats to make. I think my daughter needs a new slouchy hat and this just might be her thing.

Crochet Granny Stitch pom pom hat

This fun hat by Victoria Gogolak would make a beautiful Christmas gift for a little girl.

Slouchy crochet hat with buttons

Back to slouchy hat patterns. This classy pattern by Croyden Crochet is simple yet stylish. It just occurred to me that this is the only pattern in my list without a pompom. Pompoms are great, though. I love pompoms. Did you know there are pompom makers? They’re the greatest things! There are all sorts of fun ways to make pompoms without a special tool, but these make it seriously so easy and fun. I have 4 different sizes and I love them!

Chunky knit-look crocheted hat pattern with pompom

Finally, this chunky crocheted hat pattern from Sweet Everly B should whip up nice and quick in a pinch and would suit just about anyone.

If winter must come, at least we can crochet!

 

New Crochet Kits at knitpicks.com

 

Rainer beanie (or toque as we call them in Canada). Love this striped slouchy winter hat with a big pompom on top! #crochet #pattern #craftevangelist #etsyfind #yarn #crafts #diy
Almost all of these adorable crochet hat patterns are FREE! I love the fur pompoms and the slouchy hats that are so popular! They're the best! #crochet #patterns #free #yarn #craftevangelist #patternroundup

Real Life Pantry Organization

Such a good idea when you're short on space for a pantry: Ikea bookshelves!!!

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When we moved from our condo into our house, we lost a huge under the stairs pantry space from our little condo kitchen. The new house had more cupboards than the condo, but once we accounted for the amount of storage we needed for the pantry, it amounted to a lot less space for dishes. The design of the house means the kitchen acts as a hallway to get to the back half of the house, so we didn’t have any space to put a traditional deep pantry. So, Ikea to the rescue! We purchased 2 Billy Bookcases from Ikea, covered the back in a contact paper I liked and anchored them to the wall. Honestly, I prefer this set up to the big, deep pantry we left behind at the condo.

Real life pantry with re-purposed glass jar storage

That’s a real picture of my pantry up there. I love this pantry because it’s not as deep as traditional pantries, so I don’t lose as much stuff at the back of the pantry. The glass doors force me to keep it tidy and they also pick up on the reflection of the window, so it actually adds light to the room, a little bit like having a mirror there. They do get a little grimy from little fingers, but nothing that a quick wipe can’t take care of!

As for storage for our pantry, I prefer glass containers and I think re-purposing is the cat’s meow! The benefits are many! It diverts trash from landfills, saves the earth’s resources, and saves my resources ($$$)! There’s plenty of money to be saved by reusing things that we have coming into our houses anyway. Let me show you some of the ways that I use re-purpose glass jars I got for the cost of the products I was purchasing anyway.

Even though I often make my own pasta sauce, when jarred pasta sauce goes on sale, I pick up a few jars to keep in my pantry. Mr Wonderful likes to use it to make a quick lunch or dinner for himself or the kids. And in a pinch, even I will heat up a bunch of homemade or store-bought meatballs and add some jarred pasta sauce for a quick, brainless dinner for the family. These are actually Mason jars, which I have also re-used to can peaches. Mr Wonderful also likes to use them as large water glasses, so I just embraced that, and we have a whole bunch in our glasses cupboard.

Re-use glass jars as beverage glasses

These same jars make great dry pantry storage. I keep mineral salt, nuts, baking soda, baking powder, Trim Healthy Mama sweeteners, psyllium husks, chocolate chips, and all manner of dry pantry items. I bought those cute chalkboard labels and these chalkboard pens and also some oil-based, permanent white pens to write labels on containers that get cold or wet or dirty easily, and for those products I use often and always have on hand. I ordered all my chalkboard labels and pens on Amazon since it’s just so easy to find things there. And then, click, click… you’ve got mail!

I really held off getting an Amazon Prime membership for a long time, since I thought it was a lot of money to spend in order to have to spend more money, but now that more and more items are shipping to Canada and with 1-day shipping, it’s turned out to be super-handy, so we worked it into the budget.

Re-purpose glass jars for pantry storage!

Once upon a time, I spray-painted a bunch of lids black so that they could all be the same colour, but that was work that I just haven’t repeated. Over the years, I’ve also picked up some of these lids (the white ones pictured above). You can get them on Amazon, but you can also find them in grocery stores and other large retailers with the canning supplies. They are lids for freezer canning and dry storage, fitting perfectly on Mason jars. Now that I have collected a lot of jars, I either use these lids or only keep jars with black or white lids, so my pantry looks cohesive, which is important since my pantry is a feature in my kitchen and has glass doors.

 

There are plenty of other jars I reuse as well. I also love to use these shorter jars. Most are Better than Bouillon jars; they have a black lid and they are a perfect size for gluccie, stevia, and other things that I keep a smaller amount of in my pantry/fridge. The chalkboard labels are great for these too. Salsa jars are also a great size for pantry storage, but I don’t buy much salsa in that size and I reuse those jars for pysanky dyes (more on that later!), so I don’t have many of them in my pantry.

Great re-purposing idea! Chalkboard labels on re-purposed glass jars!

For larger pantry storage, I would love to get some sweet jars like these, which would match my chalkboard labels theme. But right now I’m using a combination of hand-me-down Tupperware my mom gave me and some cheap storage containers I bought in college.

I’m constantly trying to improve the look of my pantry since it’s always on display. Organization and tidiness are key. What are your tips for keeping your pantry tidy and organized? Tell me in the comments below: I’m always looking for new ideas! Thanks!

copyright craftevangelist

 

How I Hem and Patch Jeans

How to Hem and Patch Jeans

My children inherited my husband’s long torso and shortish legs. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not exactly the tall, slender type myself, but proportionately my legs are pretty long for my height. So I can wear regular pants without having to hem. But even for me, jeans can be the exception to that. So, with short legs running in our family (and nice round bums) we have to size up in the jeans department (for the kids) and hem (a LOT).

I was so happy to find this fabulous way of hemming jeans from Just Something I Made. Fast and easy and it keeps the original hem look that we all love about jeans. It has its drawbacks, but overall, it’s pretty great. I’ll show you on my son’s jeans.

This picture was taken after I ripped out the seam, but you can get a good idea from the wear lines, how it worked. I didn’t cut the leftover fabric off, I just hand-tacked it up on the inside so it would stay there.

This is how it looks after ripping them hem out. You can see that I took about 3 inches out in hemming them. They’ll be a little long on him and might look a tad goofy with the wear lines (and darker portion there), but I hope they’ll be acceptable enough for my husband to put them on him (he dresses the kids most days).

These jeans needed letting down for a little while, but they also began to sport a small wear tear in the knee (boys!), so I took care of the whole job in one go. I patched up the hole in the jeans like this. I first saw this here on CRAFT (complete tutorial in that link).

Inside pic. If you can’t tell what I did here, I cut a small piece of denim (from old jeans; I keep them around for crafting and whatnot… it also occurred to me that I should keep the bottom portion of my daughter’s hemmed jeans since there are usually about 4 or 5 inches to lop off those and then I could use them for patches). So I cut a little square, quite a bit bigger than the hole. Usually, there’s wear around the hole, so it’s good to give the whole area some reinforcement. I pin the denim in place and, using my sewing machine, I just sew back (using the reverse button) and forth pulling slightly to kind of zigzag it along the patch. Cover the patch that way, trim the excess patch, if you like… and you’re done!

Turn them right side out and they look like that. It’s a little funky looking, but I think goofy patches are more obvious; this is more like the distressed look. And that patch isn’t going ANYWHERE!

Birthday-Zilla and the Birthday Cake

Daisy flower cake

So, my daughter turned 8 the other weekend. Crazy, but our friends have a 9-year-old, so I sort of feel prepared for it. Y’know, their kid turns 8 and then I have a full 14 months to get used to the fact that our kid is going to be 8. Helps soften the blow.

And maybe I’m a bit biased, but she’s the sweetest eight-year-old I know. Normally, she’s a very accommodating child. She’s our first-born and she has always loved people so much. So much so that I used to wonder why they even had toys for babies, because she was never very interested in toys, other than to chew on them. She was much more entertained by people. When her brother came along, there wasn’t a moment of jealousy. It was almost bizarre: she just loved him so much and was so glad to have another person along with her all the time. Z’s definition of a brother: permanent friend.

She’s usually pretty quick to offer solutions when there are disagreements over things and many times it’s: “You can have that, Simon, I’ll just use this.” It’s not that she’s never selfish, demanding or stubborn, but her usual way is pretty accommodating.

But I don’t know who told her the rules all changed for her birthday, but this year wasn’t the first year that she turned into something of a “Birthday-Zilla,” demanding that everything had to be her way. She had to have the biggest balloon “because it’s MY birthday.” SHE was going to help make lunch because it was HER birthday. Fun. Still, all in all, it turned out to be a good day.

There’s a lot of birthday party talk for a few months before the event around our house. It starts in earnest after Christmas. I remember the birthday party being quite the commodity as a child of Z’s age. I guess it’s one of the few things that a child really has much control or say over, so whom they invite and what they do and what the cake looks like is all a pretty big deal. Z described her cake and then she drew a picture of what she wanted it to look like. I wish I could find that picture; it was great. The kids helped with the flowers. I found some great fondant punches at J. Wilton Distributors which is a great little cake supply place not too far from my work. I make my own marshmallow fondant, which is easy and yummy (if you like super sweet marshmallows) and makes a lovely soft workable fondant.

Flower birthday cake

 

 

Beauty Cupcakes

The following cupcakes were inspired by Beauty & the Beast, made for a bridal shower a few weeks ago. They were chocolate ganache filled chocolate cupcakes topped with a vanilla whipped buttercream and sugar pearls.

 

 

Heffalump Cake

For my son’s first birthday, I made him this cake. S has a stuffed Ty elephant that Z affectionately named “Lumpy” (after the Heffalump from Winnie the Pooh), so while I thought at first that I would model the cake after S’s stuffed toy, it was infinitely easier to use the Heffalump from Winnie the Pooh. Here was my inspiration:

I printed this picture off the Internet and took a picture of it.

Then I traced the cake pan, and sketched the picture onto the paper. I had some help because I copied and pasted the picture from the Internet into my Paint program and drew a rectangle around the main part of the body, so I knew about how much to sketch onto the main part and how to make the leftovers work for the rest of the pieces.

The taped-on pieces are “leftovers” from the rest of the shape being cut out. I placed this image on the cake and cut the cake around it.

I decided to use the rounded top of the cake (that I had cut off to level the cake) to shape a 3D nose for Lumpy because the cake just didn’t seem challenging enough (ha ha ha). Here is a picture with all the pieces pasted together before icing. Just about every edge was raw (a cake decorator’s nightmare).

Then, I iced the cake. I used a buttercream icing flavoured with peppermint extract instead of vanilla (mint chocolate cake…mmmmm…) and coloured it light blue (like S’s stuffie instead of light purple like the Heffalump).

Not too bad. It’s hard to get a smooth finish on a “Lumpy” surface (pun intended).

After putting the main coat of icing on, it was time for finishing.

So, here he is all drawn on and outlined.

And here we are posing with the cake, before or after singing to S at the park.
That’s my sister holding S.
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