I’m always interested to see and try new innovations in yarncrafting, so when I heard about Fauxchet, I was intrigued. Billed as ‘a new way to crochet’, fauxcheting uses a special tool in place of a crochet hook. Just as knooking is the process of forming actual knit stitches with a modified crochet hook (see my review of The Knook here), the Fauxchet easyloop tool forms actual crochet stitches using a completely different method.

(If you have a knitting machine you may recognise the special tool as a stitch transfer tool for making cables etc, but this is a clever repurposing.)

Now, as a crocheter, you may be wondering why on earth you’d want to do this! I wondered the same, which is why I was eager to test out this tool for myself and see if it offers anything new and different from standard crochet.

After trying it out, the main benefits I see are that:

1. It’s very easy to learn, as there’s just one movement: pushing the tool into the work, grabbing the loop with your other hand, then pulling the tool back out. I think this would make it a fun entry into yarncrafting for children and non-crocheters.
2. It uses completely different muscles and movements from crochet. If you have problems with mobility or pain in your hands or wrists, Fauxchet could be a good solution. You don’t need to tension the yarn, as the stitch size is controlled by the size of the loops you form by pushing the tool into the fabric – the further you push the tool, the larger your stitch. You don’t need to rotate the tool at all, and the only motions are pushing/pulling with your dominant hand, and pinching/releasing with the thumb and forefinger of your other hand.
3. As you’ll see below, I love the fabric that it forms!

My Experience

I started out by trying all the basic stitches (chain, slip stitch in back and both loops, single crochet in back and both loops). Although there is a slight learning curve, I found that I could form nice even stitches within a couple of rows of my sample:

Prior crochet experience is not at all necessary, as Fauxchet is worked completely differently. The back of the fabric faces you while you crochet, and you work left-to-right across your fabric (right-to-left for left-handers!), so it doesn’t feel at all like crocheting.

You thread the end of the yarn through the eye at the front of the tool before you begin:

Then, instead of building up loops on your hook as you form each stitch, you grip the loops with the thumb and forefinger of your non-dominant hand. This sounds like it may be a bit tricky, but is very simple once you’ve practiced for a few minutes.

The basic Fauxchet motion is very simple: your dominant hand pushes the tip of the tool into a stitch, then pulls it back out again, while your other hand pinches the loop that’s formed between thumb and forefinger. Those are the only motions involved! Take a look:

Insert the tool into a stitch:

Grip the loop with your other hand, then withdraw the tool:

Note: I’m left-handed, and these photos are not intended as a tutorial – just to give you a basic idea of the very simple technique.

I highly recommend you watch the video demos on the Fauxchet site to see how easy the stitches are in practice, with the instruction book to hand as well. Although the instruction book does explain the stitches step-by-step, it makes them sound more complicated than they actually are (e.g. inserting your hook into the next stitch and through the loop you’re holding is accomplished in one easy movement, but it’s split into two steps in the instructions).

My experience was also complicated by the fact that there are no left-handed instructions (in the books or the videos) so I had to constantly reverse all the directions. But as the stitches are so simple – as you’ll see if you watch the videos – it wasn’t too difficult to swap every ‘left’ and ‘right’ in the instructions.

My Fauxchet tip is to make the starting chain extremely loosely. In fact, if you’re fairly new to fauxchet, I recommend you make the first few rows (or a swatch) to get your tension even, then unravel it all and start again with the same yarn once you’ve got into the rhythm.

I found the process of ‘fauxcheting’ very soothing once I got into the rhythm. It made a nice change from crocheting and knitting, and the fabric formed is so loose and drapey that it looks very pretty, even with using only the simplest crochet stitches.

Fauxchet vs Crochet

Although Fauxchet does produce actual crochet stitches, it’s far more limited than a crochet hook. As there’s no mechanism for a yarn over, you can only use it to make short stitches: chain, slip stitch, single crochet, and loop stitch (although, by working into back, front or both loops, that still allows for a range of results). And, just as with crochet, you can make combination stitches from the basic stitches (sc clusters, picots, etc).

I compared a swatch of normal crochet with my Fauxcheted swatch and learnt a few things:

1. Working with worsted weight yarn, the Fauxchet tool gave me the same gauge as crocheting with a size M (9mm) crochet hook. That’s a lot larger than you’d usually use with ww yarn!
2. The fauxchet stitches are twisted compared with standard single crochet stitches (see photo comparison, below) – possibly why the stitch is called ‘single Fauxchet’ instead of ‘single crochet’ in the instructions, as they aren’t exactly the same stitch.
3. Fauxcheted fabric is both drapier and less gappy than the equivalent crocheted fabric made with the same yarn to the same gauge. With my M hook, the crochet feels more like knots and spaces, while Fauxchet stitches feel looser and give more even coverage. I have a theory for this: I suspect that using an extra-large hook forces big holes into your fabric, thus pulling the previous stitches into knots, whereas the slim Fauxchet needle doesn’t disturb the previous stitches, keeping the fabric more regular.

Fauxchet vs crochet – look at the blue ‘V’ shapes and you’ll see the fauxchet Vs are twisted at the bottom compared with the crochet Vs.

While the large size of the Fauxchet stitches means that it’s unsuitable for making amigurumi (where the whole point is to make small stitches so you produce a stiff, well-shaped fabric), it is ideally suited for making wearable accessories, as the gauge is so loose that your stitches will have beautiful drape with no effort on your part!

Fauxchet In Practice

My favourite stitch from my swatch was the ‘ridged single Fauxchet’, which is the equivalent of front loop only twisted single crochet (but much easier than that name makes it sound!)

I love the look of the fabric this stitch makes, so I thought I’d try making a quick ridged single Fauxchet scarf in a bulky chainette bamboo yarn I had in my stash. The yarn is lovely and soft, but although it’s labelled DK it’s on the heavy end of bulky, and it’s been too heavy for me to crochet with (giant chunky stitches aren’t my style). Here’s the resulting scarf:

The fabric is even and not at all stiff. I’m very impressed with how it looks:

Fauxchet on Canvas

I was excited to see that you can also use Fauxchet to make rugs. It’s much faster than latch hooking, because you make loop stitches into the rug canvas directly from the ball of yarn, instead of tying on individual strands of yarn. The end result is a loopy rug, or you can cut the loops if you’d like a more conventional shag rug.

I did have a little play with the loop stitches, but I didn’t quite get the hang of it – I won’t even show you my swatch, because it’s too embarrassing. Every time I pulled a knot tight to lock a loop in place, I shrank the loop at the same time… I think my problem is that the motion uses your non-dominant hand, and I’m not very skilled with my right hand!

I can see from the videos that it’s possible to do it correctly and consistently, so I’d just need some more practice before attempting a rug. While there definitely is a learning curve to this technique, if you persevered and got the hang of it, it’d be a lot faster and less fiddly than conventional latch hooking.

Fauxchet: My Verdict

Pros:

• Easy to learn
• Different (and small) movements may be useful for those suffering from hand and wrist problems
• Makes fabric with beautiful drape

Cons:

• Limited range of stitches (chain, slip stitch, twisted single crochet, loop stitch)
• The Fauxchet tool is only intended for use with worsted and bulky weight yarn
• As the yarn is threaded through the tool, the tool is locked into the project until you finish an entire ball of yarn or cut the yarn
• Working backwards and using such a different gauge means you can’t easily follow a standard crochet pattern

So, is Fauxchet a replacement for crochet? No, definitely not – and nobody is claiming that it is. But it does have its own advantages, and I’ll definitely be keeping my Fauxchet tool in my craft collection.

I think that making a fauxcheted blanket would be a good relaxing long-term project that’d give me a nice soothing break from the other crafts I enjoy. From my experience with my swatches and scarf, I already know that the end result will have beautiful drape and no excess bulk or holes, which are perfect properties for a blanket, so I’m looking forward to the slow meditative process of push/pull, grip/release and watching the rows slowly grow.

Where to Buy

If you’d like to try the Fauxchet tool, you can buy it from Amazon (it’s very inexpensive!), and I recommend you watch the free videos and try some of the free patterns from the Fauxchet site. If you enjoy fauxcheting, you can buy downloadable patterns and ebooks from Amazon (or direct from LeisureArts).

Let’s get this out of the way first: I received a digital copy of these books to review. But I’m not being compensated for this review in any other way, and the following is based on my honest opinions!

Overview

I have two books to review today! Both are Tunisian crochet books by Kim Guzman, and I really see them as a complementary set, so I thought I’d review them together. Both are published by LeisureArts, and they are:

• Ultimate Beginner’s Guide to Tunisian Crochet (I’ll call it the Beginner’s Guide)
• Tunisian Crochet Stitch Guide (I’ll call it the Stitch Guide)

Let’s start off with a look at each:

Ultimate Beginner’s Guide to Tunisian Crochet

In this book, Kim walks you step by step through all the basic techniques for Tunisian crochet, with clear step-by-step photo illustrations. The first section packs a lot of valuable information into 10 pages: Tunisian hook info, all the common basic stitches, increasing and decreasing, changing colour and changing yarn, and seaming.

The remainder of the book is devoted to a selection of patterns to help you apply and practice your new knowledge and skills. This section includes 9 patterns, ranging from a very basic hat, through a blanket, fingerless mitts, and wearables (all for ladies: a ruana and two vests). The Drop Stitch Cowl (pictured above) and the Felted Duffel bag are my favourites of the included patterns. All the patterns include full written instructions (with the exception of the blanket, which is charted) and include schematics, where appropriate, for sizing.

Tunisian Crochet Stitch Guide

With this book, Kim has developed more stitch patterns than I imagined existed for Tunisian Crochet! The book includes 61 stitch patterns split over 4 chapters: Learning Charts (14 basic stitches), Typical Stitches (17 patterns), Color Stitches (12 patterns), and Lace Stitches (18 patterns).

Each stitch pattern is charted, with a helpful key given on the same page as each chart. No prior knowledge of Tunisian crochet charts is needed, as the first chapter walks you through each stitch with both the chart and full accompanying text instructions (as pictured in Stitch 1 and Stitch 2, above). The book ends with a brief reference section for all the included basic stitches.

My Experience

The Stitch Guide is a crochet stitch dictionary, but purely for Tunisian crochet stitch patterns. The best way to test a stitch dictionary is to test a variety of the stitch patterns, so I bought some co-ordinating yarns and starting working through the book from the beginning, making a swatch for each stitch pattern. I’d only ever used the basic Tunisian stitches before, so this was new ground for me. And I haven’t done any Tunisian crochet since 2010, so the Beginner’s Guide came in very handy as a refresher for the basic techniques.

Kim is a true expert in Tunisian crochet and I was looking forward to expanding my skills in this form of crochet. Working through the Stitch Guide (with the Beginner’s Guide as a backup) was a great way to learn more about Tunisian crochet: I discovered that some Tunisian stitches bias heavily (I ended up with a very slanted parallelogram instead of a square with some of the stitches) and others curl, a little or a lot. Some stitches were easy and enjoyable to work, and others I found awkward and had to grit my teeth and force myself to complete the square. Some gave me a thick, dense fabric (as I had expected), others were pretty and lacy, but my favourites were thin and relatively solid, with nice drape – I can definitely imagine using some of these for a future project.

A selection of my swatches – some biased, some curled, some neither, some both!

All this is such valuable information to have before starting a project! Designing is so much more than choosing a pretty stitch pattern from a book – you have to know how the fabric will behave and whether it’s a good fit for the project you have in mind. A wonderful stitch for a thick afghan would probably be disastrous in a sweater. So, if you’re planning to use this (or any other) stitch dictionary, I definitely recommend you make a swatch before you embark on the full project – even if you don’t care about gauge, you still need it to discover the characteristics of the fabric you’re about to create!

I made 32 different 3.75″ squares while testing out these books. I wasn’t sure at first what I was going to do with them, but I decided to make a sampler cushion cover. I only have one Tunisian hook and I was making very small squares, so I couldn’t vary the gauge. Instead, I modified some of the larger stitch patterns so I could create the same size of square each time. Once I had enough squares, I pinned them all to the same dimensions and steam blocked them to reduce the curling and biasing. This made it much easier to crochet all the squares together to form the two sides of the cushion cover.

I kept a key of the stitch patterns I used, so I can use my cushion as a reference 🙂

I made a cushion pad to fit the cover, using fabric from an old (clean) bed sheet and some stuffing. I tufted the cushion to keep the stuffing from sinking to one side of the cushion and to keep it from puffing up in the middle, to better show off my squares.

And then I crocheted the front and back of the cushion together around their edges, inserting the cushion before I crocheted the final edge. Here’s the result – a lovely Tunisian crochet sampler cushion – isn’t it yummy? It’s like a chocolate box of Tunisian crochet!

Yes, those twisted swatches I showed you above turned into these gorgeous squares once they were blocked and edged.

And my cushion is completely reversible, with all different stitch patterns on the back – I think I may like this side even more:

In case you’re trying to match these with the ‘key’ picture above, I accidentally photographed my cushion upside down in both these photos…

I found it fascinating to try such a variety of Tunisian crochet stitch patterns, and I only tried just over half the included patterns (32 out of 61)! Colourwork adds another unique dimension to Tunisian crochet, and there are 12 two- or three-colour patterns, plus 16 more lace patterns and the heart motif pattern (#27) that was too large for me to include in my cushion, so there’s still plenty left to explore in the Stitch Guide.

Peeves

• I would have appreciated some additional guidance in both books on how to make the last stitch of each row; the Beginner’s Guide explains how to make the last stitch differently for a tss, but doesn’t explain how that translates into the other stitches, and I had to consult Kim’s YouTube videos for additional help. The Stitch Guide doesn’t make any mention of the last stitch of the row being any different. I would have loved it if the instructions for each stitch explained the way to form the final stitch of each row, and that was also reflected in the chart (for example, in Kim’s video, she shows that the last stitch of the row in twisted simple stitch is not twisted, but the chart and instructions in the guide don’t explain that). I now think that the final stitch is always made in one of two ways: knitwise (from the front) or purlwise (from the back), but I’m not 100% sure on that, as neither book explained it, and none of the charts show the last stitches worked differently.
• After I completed Chapter 1 of the Stitch Guide, I was surprised to find that the remaining stitch patterns are all only charted, with no text instructions. This makes sense, as the later patterns are more complex and would take a lot of space to write out, but I haven’t seen this mentioned anywhere else, and it’s important: Tunisian charts look very different to standard crochet charts. After trying every stitch pattern in Chapter 1, I understood the charts by the time I no longer had the text for backup, but if you bought the book and wanted to jump in with a Chapter 2 pattern, you’d have to learn how to read the chart first! (The book does include a page on how to read charts, and a master list of all the symbols used.)
• I also noticed a couple of errors regarding the swatch photos: the swatch for Stitch 23 shows a different pattern to the chart (there’s a 2-row repeat in the swatch and a 1-row repeat in the instructions and chart – I believe they are missing a row of tss that separates each pattern row in the swatch); and the swatch for Stitch 26 has been photographed turned both sideways and back to front! But I highly recommend you make your own swatch before jumping into a project using any of these stitches anyway, as the results are often much more beautiful in reality than you can tell from the swatch photo.
• The stitch instructions in the Stitch Guide are all in a section at the end of the book. This makes sense given the amount of repetition that would be needed otherwise, and it keeps the book nice and compact. As I have the ebook version, though, I found this a bit unwieldy in practice – I can tell you that flipping to the back of a paper book for a reminder of a stitch is far easier than trying to ‘flip about’ within a PDF ebook! It’d be nice to see future ebooks using internal hyperlinks (and a ‘back’ button) for this sort of thing; paper books still do some things better at the moment.

Final Thoughts

If you’re new to Tunisian crochet, I’d recommend the Ultimate Beginner’s Guide to Tunisian Crochet as a good way to learn the basics, and a handy reference to keep around. You can practice your stitches and gain confidence by following the included patterns, and build your skills while you crochet a variety of projects such as a hat, a cowl, fingerless mitts or a baby blanket. Although I probably won’t be making any of the included patterns myself, the 10-page reference section at the start of the book still makes it a must-have for my collection.

If you already have some experience with the basic Tunisian stitches and are looking for a bit of variety, the Tunisian Crochet Stitch Guide is an excellent resource to add to your collection. While it does include instructions for each of the basic stitches used to form the various stitch patterns, they are brief reminders, not step-by-step instructions, so I wouldn’t recommend this as your first beginner’s book. Also, don’t buy this book if you’re looking for interesting project patterns, as it’s solely a stitch dictionary (although Kim does mention that you can make a scarf using any of the stitch patterns). But the stitches are varied and some are very unusual – I’ve learnt a huge amount about Tunisian crochet through this book, and discovered some lovely stitches!

These two books complement each other perfectly, as, once you’ve thoroughly learnt the basics from the Beginner’s Guide, you’ll be ready to try out the exciting new stitch patterns in the Stitch Guide. I’ll definitely be keeping both books in my library.

As always, I was not compensated for this review, and the following is based on my honest opinions!

I’ve known Abby through craft blogging circles for years – you may also know her from her blog, While She Naps – and I’ve been eagerly anticipating this book since the day she first announced she’d be writing it! Abby and I are kindred spirits in the sense that we’re both passionate about the techniques used to create our stuffed animal designs – in my case amigurumi, and in hers sewn toys.

You’ve probably already heard good things about this book (with everything going on here, it’s taken me far longer than I’d anticipated to prepare this review) but I don’t think you could test a book much more thoroughly than I have! And (spoiler alert) I’m so excited to show you the results of my testing process! Read on to see what I’ve been able to make, thanks to Stuffed Animals…

Overview

Stuffed Animals: From Concept to Construction by Abigail Patner Glassenberg is “a comprehensive reference that teaches you how to sew heirloom-quality stuffed animals, from four-legged friends that actually stand to a classic, poseable Teddy bear.”

Stuffed Animals begins with a very useful introductory section, covering tools and materials, design considerations (research, pattern drafting, fabric selection, etc), and how to actually make soft toys (sewing, turning, stuffing, etc). This is a really solid basic instructional section, and, if you’re new to toymaking, I’d recommend that you read these chapters thoroughly before you do anything else.

The remainder of the book takes the form of a pattern followed by 3-4 lessons on techniques that were used/demonstrated in the pattern. The patterns are child-friendly and designed to make toys that will be played with and treasured. My favourites are the cute puppy, the hilarious zipper-mouthed dinosaur, and the classic teddy bear (just to satisfy my curiosity on how these are made).

All the pattern pieces are printed at full-size (except the dinosaur, which is just too big) so you can copy them directly without resizing. But, even better than that, all the pattern pieces are also available to download from Lark Crafts. This is an excellent bonus feature – it’s so much easier to print the relevant pages directly than to try to hold the book open to scan/copy the pattern pages, and, in the PDF version, the pattern pieces aren’t overlapped (they have to be in the book, to save space), so it’s much easier to see what’s going on. Thumbs up to Lark for offering this.

The pattern instructions are detailed, and numbered points guide you through each stage of the toy assembly, together with in-progress photos of all the interim stages. (Although I didn’t try making one of the included patterns, I read through several from start to finish in preparation for my own design, and I used the step-by-step instructions to help me figure out my toy assembly – I just used my own pattern pieces instead of Abby’s – so I can verify that the instructions are clear and easy to follow.)

After you’ve made each pattern, Abby follows with some theory on the techniques used in the pattern that you can use when designing your own toys, and additional related tips. For example, the Elephant pattern also serves as a demonstration of very useful design features: an underbody gusset, setting legs on darts, cutting a slit to insert a detail (ears, in this case), and making eyelids. (I ended up using 3 of these techniques in my design!)

It’s a big book, both in size and number of pages, with lots of content covered (16 patterns and 52 lessons), so there’s plenty of value for money here.

My Experience

I decided to try creating a sewn version of one of my amigurumi designs, and I thought my aardvark would be a good example, with only one colour and a very distinctive shape to replicate. Plus, who’s ever seen a soft toy aardvark?! Mine could be the first ever created!

The inspiration: my amigurumi aardvark design

I have happy memories of sitting on my bed as a teenager, listening to the Friday Rock Show on the radio, and hand-sewing toys from kits. So I’m no newcomer to sewing toys, but how the strangely-shaped pattern pieces combine into a perfect animal shape always remained a magical mystery to me.

Toys I sewed from kits, over 20 years ago(!)

Designing for crochet (where you create the shape in 3D as you go) is nothing like designing for sewing (where you create the shape from multiple 2D fabric pieces) so I knew going in that this would be a huge challenge for me, and an excellent test of Abby’s teaching. You may have noticed that I like to jump in at the deep end in my crafting adventures, and this is no exception…

I read through all the lessons and skimmed all the project instructions to see each technique in action before deciding which would make good starting points for the design I wanted to create. I wrote myself a list so I could refer back to these lessons when I needed them (lessons 8, 9, 10, 12, 14, 17, 29, 39 and 50 and the elephant, dinosaur, kangaroo and hippo patterns) and then I was ready to start!

I took some measurements from my crocheted aardvark, and drafted my first pattern, building in all Abby’s advice about underbody gussets and darts so the legs wouldn’t splay. I got some scrap fabric and whipped up my first prototype on the sewing machine:

Hahaha! Oh dear – I’m embarrassed to even show you this. I didn’t have a real grasp of the way to create a fully rounded shape, so my poor aardvark v1 was skinny with a giant humpback. Note, though, that the legs are nice and straight! I went back to the drawing board (and the book) and used the information on sewing a ball to refine my design with an additional top gusset piece, to create my second pattern and prototype:

Definitely better, but still not right. I didn’t bother sewing on the footpads or snout or figuring out the ears at this stage – no point working on details if the main body still looks awful. So I went back for another round of prototyping:

It was starting to look like an aardvark by this stage, although I have no idea what was going on in the chin area! I marked the eye position, and, using Abby’s elephant design for instruction on how to insert the ears, I also used this prototype to test 2 different ear positions, so I could get an idea of the best way to do it. (Don’t look at the legs too closely – I got a little scissor-happy when trimming these seams, so some of them came undone when I turned it! All good learning experiences…)

I could have made another prototype, but by this stage I was running out of time (I have my own book to write, you know!) and had no more scrap fabric, so I decided to be bold and make the next version, with a few final tweaks, in my real fabric, and keep my fingers crossed I’d got it right this time…

I’m what I’d call a straight-line sewist: I can whip up a basic skirt or bag on my sewing machine, but these small pieces, exact lines and tight curves are a little beyond my skill level – just the thought of stitching the tiny circles for the feet and the snout with my machine makes me shiver. To give me the best chance of success, I decided to go back to what I know, and hand-sew the final aardvark. Much, much slower, but very relaxing, and it’s much easier for me to get a smooth finish when I place each stitch individually!

When it came to inserting the safety eyes, I had a big surprise – I thought there was no way my awl (bought on Abby’s recommendation) would create a hole large enough for the shaft of the eye to slip through, but it did! Not snipping the fabric for the eyes was a revelation. This is the kind of expert tip that makes Stuffed Animals such a treasure.

Finally, finally, it was time to turn and stuff my aardvark, and see what I’d created… In my quest for the perfect aardvark, after turning and stuffing, I unstuffed and unturned and tweaked a couple of my seams by less than 1mm to subtly alter a curve here and there – it made a big difference. Then all I had to do was re-turn, re-stuff, and sew up the final seam (I came up with a little tip of my own at this stage to make my ladder stitches perfect – I’ll mention it here, in case it helps anyone else: as my fabric is stretchy, I couldn’t press a seam line as shown in Abby’s examples, so I basted a row of running stitches along each edge as a guide for my ladder stitches.)

Basting lines in burgundy so I could accurately place my ladder stitches

And the end result is:

Fatty Aardvark! I love him so much, and I can’t really explain why.. I don’t think his charm really comes across in the photo: he’s big and soft and unbelievably cuddly. I love how solid and fat he is, but he’s still recognisably a PlanetJune design. And he’s irresistably huggable!

He’s most definitely an aardvark, isn’t he? And look at those perfectly straight legs: not a hint of splay there. If I were going into the soft toy pattern design business (which I’m not – at least for the forseeable future!) I’d probably do one more iteration to tweak the angles on the neck and tail a teeny bit, but Fatty Aardvark is perfect just the way he is.

I’ve learnt so much from this project; I feel like Abby has given me the skills to design lots of animal toys (if only I had the time, and could master my sewing machine so I can actually sew samples on it instead of hand-sewing!)

Ami and Fatty Aardvarks

As shaping is so important to me in my designs, now I’ve seen how much difference 1mm in your sewing line makes to the shape of the finished toy, I think I’m more comfortable sticking with designing crochet patterns; they give you much more precise control over the shape you end up with. Follow my crochet pattern stitch by stitch and you will end up with the same shape as me, even if you’re a beginner. Cut and sew my sewing pattern template and you’d probably end up with a similar, but not identical, shape – by the time you’ve eyeballed a 1/4″ seam to add to the pattern piece and then eyeballed it away again to get back to the stitching lines, it’s highly unlikely you’ll end up with exactly the same shape, even if you’re a master of your sewing machine.

Aardvark evolution, or how I went from embarrassing ignoramus to plush designer in 4 stages – and all thanks to Stuffed Animals!

Peeves

These are all small niggles that I’m including for the sake of completeness. As I’ve used this book as a technique reference, not as a project instructional book, some of my peeves relate to that: if I’d made Abby’s projects before attempting one of my own, I’d have a better grasp of which techniques are illustrated by which project.

• A visual contents page of all the projects in the book would have been very useful; to decide which project would be the closest starting point for each element of my design (e.g. do the closest legs belong to the elephant, or the lion, or the dinosaur, or something else?) I found myself flicking through the book over and over, making lists of every technique I thought might be useful for my design.
• The index is brief and alphabetized not by subject, but by lesson title. I’ll give you a couple of examples of why this is a problem: I wanted to look up Abby’s advice on stretchy fabrics, but Stretch isn’t in the index, and neither is Fabric! The fabric selection advice is actually listed under C in the index, for Choosing Fabric – would you have thought to look there? And then I tried looking up Joints (there are 5 jointing lessons that I can see, spread over 3 projects) but there’s no mention of any of these on the index page. I’d advise you ignore the index and skim through the contents instead – it’s just as easy to find information there, and it’s far more complete.
• Abby is clearly 100% a sewing machine user – there is no mention anywhere of the fact it’s possible to sew toys completely by hand. There is a page on hand stitches, but it only shows how to make various stitches for closing and embellishing, with no mention of which stitch would be best to use for hand-sewing a toy. (I just made one up to sew my aardvark – a faster variant of backstitch – but it would be nice to have some expert advice on that topic.)
• I did spot a couple of minor text errors in my flick-through; the hippo’s underbody pattern piece is labelled ‘upperbody’, the footpads say to cut 2, not 4, and there’s no mention of attaching the hippo’s footpads to the legs. I’ve notified Abby so these can be added to the book’s errata page – unfortunately, errors are a fact of life in printed books, so I always recommend you consult the errata if something confuses you in any craft book.

Final Thoughts

This is a one-of-a-kind book and I think it really fills a gap in the marketplace. I’ve decided that this is really three books in one, and different people will use it in very different ways:

It’s a soft toy pattern book: If you’re looking for a book of toy patterns, this is a varied collection of animal patterns to suit a range of skill levels. If you want to make a toy as a gift, you’ll probably find a design to suit every child. While there’s no difficulty level indicated on the patterns, the complexity increases throughout the book as new techniques are introduced.

It’s a course on soft toy technique and construction: Abby’s background as a teacher really shows through here; this book is structured as a step-by-step course, with each project as a demonstration piece for the lessons in that chapter. If you work through every project in the book, learning the lessons as you go, you’ll have a solid grasp of soft toy design techniques that you could bring to your future projects.

It’s a soft toy design reference book: And then there are people like me, who want the book solely as a reference book and will create our own designs. The included patterns are still useful as demonstrations of the lessons, which, for me, are the real gold. The lack of an alphabetised index is a real blow here – this is the only place where the book falls down for me. Everything I need to know is here, somewhere, but I found I had to flip through the book over and over again to hunt for the gems I needed. But it was always worth it – the content in Stuffed Animals is worth digging for, and my copy has definitely earned its place on my permanent reference shelf.

Overall: highly recommended! (Well done, Abby!)

Note: Don’t miss the giveaway at the end of this post!

You’ve probably heard of MOO before – the company that turns your Flickr images into mini business cards – but they now offer a lot more: full size business cards, greeting cards and postcards, stickers and labels, and more. And you don’t need a Flickr account to use them – you can upload your photos directly to MOO.

MOO asked me if I’d like to test out their service, and I was happy to oblige – I’d wanted to order some minicards anyway, but had no idea that they’d be able to ship to me in South Africa! It turns out that MOO have two websites (US and UK) but they ship worldwide from both those locations (if you’re international, compare shipping prices to your country from each site before you order, to get the best deal).

My Experience

I decided the most useful products for me would be lots of PlanetJune MiniCards and StickerBooks. (I also ordered a high quality dot grid notebook, because I love large notebooks when I’m designing, and the grid of dots makes it easy for me to draw crochet stitch patterns, write without sloping down the page, and sketch without lines getting in the way.)

The process for creating any size of cards or stickers is really simple – just browse your computer for some suitable photos, and upload them. The unique thing about MOO’s service is that you don’t need to have the same image on each of your cards: for no extra cost, you can upload as many images as you want, to the point where every card in your pack can have a different photo, if you want! (You can also use MOO’s design templates if you don’t want to start from scratch with your card design.)

Once you’ve uploaded your images, you can resize and crop each one to fill the frame nicely before approving the project. You can also delete any images that don’t look good, add extra pics, or save your project to edit later. A little tip: If you have several designs uploaded to one pack of cards/stickers, you’ll receive an equal number of each design. As my Baby Bunnies photo is so perfect for the MiniCard size and shape, I added that same photo several times, so I’d end up with lots of bunny cards and a few of each of my other choices.

Here’s what arrived:

Lots of pretties! Let’s look at the MiniCards first:

They look great: bright and colourful, and the photos are crisp and high-res. MiniCards are the same width as a standard business card, but half the height. Each card is printed in full colour on both sides of the high quality cardstock, so, for the first time ever, I have my logo and colour printing on the back of my business cards:

I want to address price before I move on. Although MOO’s prices may not look competitive compared with cheaper services like Vistaprint which I’ve used in the past, there are no hidden extras with MOO. When I used Vistaprint, by the time I’d added the glossy upgrade fee, the image upload fee, and the print on reverse side fee, the cards ended up being many times more expensive than they initially appeared to be, and only worked out to be cost-effective if I bulk-ordered 500 or 1000 cards at a time. And looking at both cards together, the print quality is much better on the MOO cards:

MOO (left) vs Vistaprint (right). Any fuzziness is from the extreme close-up, but you can see the clear grain pattern visible on the VP cards only.

Okay, now back to my order! I put together the most adorable StickerBooks:

Each sticker is just under an inch (22mm) in size. The stickers have rounded edges and look completely professional. My only problem with them is that they look so cute as a sticker collection, I’m going to have a hard time using any of the stickers!

As you can see from my earlier photo, MiniCards come packaged in a very nice classy white cardboard box, but as they are an unusual shape, I also bought a MiniCard holder to keep my cards looking pristine when I’m out and about:

I chose this hot pink shade so I’ll quickly be able to find it in my bag when needed, but you can also get sensible black and white versions. And this is, for me, the genius part of MOO cards. Now when I meet someone and they ask what I do, I can whip out my pink card holder and say “I design the patterns for these”:

Pick a card; any card…

I’ve already tried it and it’s a great icebreaker – nobody can resist taking the cards and looking through them all. Then I can casually say “keep your favourite, if you like” and they look thrilled as they try to choose the one they like best. The result is that I’ve handed out my business card (and my details are on the back, so I may get a new customer as a result), but my new friend feels like they’ve been given a gift instead of having contact details forced on them. Win-win 🙂

Giveaway Time!

MOO have very generously offered to give three PlanetJune readers their choice of either 50 Classic Business Cards or 100 MiniCards. (Classic Business Cards are exactly the same as MiniCards in terms of quality etc; the only difference is that they’re standard business card size).

The prizes includes standard worldwide shipping, so this contest is open to everyone – yay!

To enter:

• Just leave a comment on this post saying what you’d use your MOO cards for if you win!
• One entry per person, please.
• Make sure the email address you leave with your comment is valid, so I can contact you if you win (don’t worry, that field is private, so only I will see it).
• You may enter until 6pm (EST) 11.59pm (PST) on Tuesday January 22nd 2013. I’ll draw the 3 random winners from all the entries after that time.

Good luck!

UPDATE 24 Jan: Thanks to everyone who entered! Just to keep you in the loop, I’ll be drawing the winners in the next few days (when I have time to set up the random drawing) and I’ll update this post with the winners’ names once I’ve done that 🙂

The team at Kollabora thought I might enjoy playing with a crochet kit (and they were right!), so they sent me their tutorial for making One-Skein Finger Crochet Scarves, and 2 skeins of Red Heart Boutique Sashay yarn. I’ve been curious about these new novelty ruffle yarns, so I thought I’d review the yarn for you and these two very different scarf projects I used it for…

Ruffle yarn scarves

About Ruffle Yarn

As this yarn is so unusual, let’s take a better look at it…

Straight off the skein, it looks like a ribbon

Opened out – you knit or crochet into the top edge; the decorative sparkly bottom edge will be on the outside of the ruffles

If you want to try out a ruffle yarn, Red Heart Boutique Sashay isn’t the only yarn of this type – ruffles are a hot novelty yarn trend and many yarn producers have jumped on board, so you can probably find similar yarns, from different brands, wherever you live.

Project One: Finger Crochet Scarf

I’ve never tried finger crochet, so I thought this would be fun. And it really was! The yarn was actually a perfect match for this project – straight from the skein without stretching the mesh out, it’s very thick and works up quickly. The colour changed every couple of stitches to keep things interesting. If you have kids, this project would be a great way to get them chaining, maybe as a prelude to teaching them to crochet with a hook. Even small children could easily make a necklace/scarf they could wear proudly afterwards.

You can find the One-Skein Finger Crochet Scarves instructions on Kollabora. As an experiment, I tried varying my tension from tight loops, through normal tension, and then then intentionally elongating each loop. The end results are noticeably different, but all 3 look good:

Tension variations, top to bottom: loose, normal, tight

I must admit, I didn’t think this scarf/necklace thing was for me, especially in such bright colours (this colourway is called Twist) – I intended to unravel it and reuse the yarn in the ruffly way it’s intended. But then, just for fun, I tied the ends together, coiled it into 4 giant loops, then wound those 3 times each around my neck to make a giant cowl with 12 wraps, and I kind of love it!

Finger crocheted cowl (12 wraps of giant chain stitches)

Even with my tension experiments, it looks good, but perfectionist me thinks I might just unravel it all and redo it at even tension – it was so fast and fun that it wouldn’t be a hardship to remake it anyway.

Project Two: Frilly Ruffle Scarf

I thought that using the ruffle yarn without opening it out to reveal the texture was a bit of a waste of the special ruffly properties, so I decided to try the knitted ruffle scarf pattern from the yarn’s ball band with my second skein. (It’s the free Frilly Knit Scarf pattern. If you don’t knit, Red Heart have a companion free Frilly Crochet Scarf pattern, but I didn’t realise that until I’d already knitted mine..!)

The knitting part is really really simple – knit 6 stitches and turn – so if you’ve ever knitted before, you won’t have a problem with that. It’s also very fast, and the end result looks much more impressive and complicated than it really is. The most difficult part is wrapping your head around the fact that you don’t use this type of yarn like a conventional yarn: you only insert your needle or hook into the holes along the top edge of the yarn, and ignore the rest of the mesh (which will form the frilly ruffles) – I recommend you look on YouTube for assistance if this confuses you.

Ruffles!

A little tip: if you’re trying to knit this particular frilly scarf, knit into every other space at the edge of the yarn. (The pattern doesn’t mention this.) If you knit into each space, you’ll end up with a dense spiral and no ruffles! I only figured this out after I’d knit about a foot of scarf and realised it looked nothing like the photo… Luckily it’s very easy to frog, as the mesh is smooth, so there are no fluffy fibre strands to get snarled together. After restarting:

Frilly ruffle scarf

Ooh! The finished scarf is wonderfully lacy and ruffly, but, even in in this lovely muted colourway (called Shuffle) I think it’s a bit too dramatic for my typical understated style – I felt like I was wearing a feather boa 🙂

Ruffle Yarn Verdict

Although it’s a ‘waste’ of the ruffles, a finger-crocheted scarf made from unstretched variegated ruffle yarn is fun, and would be a great first yarn craft project for children. You could easily get 2 scarves from one skein – I’m sure 6 wraps of chained scarf around my neck would have been plenty instead of the 12 I got from using the full skein!

A frilly ruffle scarf – either knitted or crocheted – would make a great gift for the right person, without a huge time commitment in making it. And you can really impress your non-crafty friends who don’t realise how simple it is to make – the yarn does almost all the work for you!

I also think that, in cream or white, this type of yarn would be a perfect way to make easy frilly ‘lace’ collars and cuffs for costumes, but I can’t think of many other uses for it. Even the patterns on the Red Heart site only show it used as an edging, to make a quick flower, or in several (apparently identical except for colour) frilly scarves…

I’d been wondering about these new novelty yarns, so I really enjoyed playing with the Boutique Sashay. As it works up quickly (both in ribbon and mesh forms) you can complete a project in no time, and with only one skein of yarn. It’s a bit limited in use, but, provided you have the right project for it, it’s fun and easy to work with (once you’ve figured out where to insert your hook/needle!)

Thanks very much to Kollabora for sending me these yarn projects to try out.

About Kollabora

Kollabora is a new community site for makers offering DIY inspiration, learning, sharing, and supplies. They offer curated fashion-forward projects in sewing, jewellery and knitting categories (‘knitting’ includes crochet, btw) and, if you feel inspired, you can buy the pattern and all the supplies you’ll need directly from their page.

Their blog includes trend-spotting, how-tos, maker interviews and more, and they also have some wonderful original projects and patterns available at no cost – for example, I love the knitted Anchored Beach Wrap by Ruby Submarine.

Here’s what they have to say:

We believe that we are what we make, and that people should have a creative alternative to just buying products. They should have the opportunity to make what they’re inspired by. Every project on Kollabora feeds and fosters your creativity, and, above all, offers you the choice to make it yourself—a fun, unique and truly fulfilling alternative to simply buying an end product. We hope that you’ll share your adventurous experiences and expertise as we continue to craft our site into a wondrous, one-stop destination for everything you need to make something awesome.

I love this idea! In this time of disposable one-season fashions and cheap, low-quality imports, people are looking to make clothes and accessories instead of buying, and Kollabora’s projects show that you can be just as fashion-forward and on-trend when you choose to make it yourself.

I’ve only explored the knitting (& crochet) section of Kollabora so far, so I’m looking forward to checking out the sewing and jewellery categories to see what else I get inspired to make…

I won this book through its blog tour, so I decided to review it for you. The following, as always, is based on my honest opinions!

Overview

Mend It Better: Creative Patching, Darning, and Stitching by Kristin M Roach, who you may know from her blog Craft Leftovers, is a combination book consisting of basic mending advice and project tutorials for creative mending.

The tutorials, mostly contributed by other crafters, show a variety of mending options to cover tears, holes and stains by crafting embellishments or making a feature of the damaged area, and upcycling projects to improve badly-fitting clothing or thrift store finds. Kristen also provides a tutorial for making a cute zippered mending kit.

Colourful creative mending projects (e.g. this page is from the Mola Applique Patch tutorial by Carina Envoldsen-Harris)

The bulk of the book is reference material: it includes a lot of excellent mending information: repairing various fabrics; fixing damaged seams and buttonholes; repairing or replacing damaged zips and pockets, and much more. But calling it just a ‘mending book’ doesn’t really do it justice (and I haven’t seen this mentioned in any other reviews) – it also includes instructions for alterations you can make to your clothing: taking in a seam, adding hidden pockets, taking up a hem, adding bead or stitched embellishments, etc.

Detailed information, e.g. how to mend pile (left) and stretch (right) fabrics

The information starts from absolute basics – no prior knowledge of sewing equipment or techniques is assumed. The written instructions and accompanying photos are clear and comprehensive. Although I’m not in love with the narrow 3-column page layout, it’s efficient – there’s lots of information on each page but it doesn’t feel cramped. All project steps are clearly numbered, so it’s easy to follow the instructions.

Mending information starting from the basics

My Experience

I skimmed through the whole book to give me a basic idea of techniques I could use at the moment and then decided to fix a backpack where the fabric had frayed along the seam allowance and left a big hole along the seam. I used my sewing machine and sewed a patch onto the back of the frayed fabric, then unpicked the original seam and re-sewed it to include the patch. I didn’t think to take a ‘before’ picture, but, as you can see, the result is pretty much invisible:

The fabric had frayed along the seam, leaving a big hole between the arrows.

Next I consulted the section on fixing leather. I had assumed my office chair was real leather until it started to wear through and rip, and I could see the sad pleathery truth. Months ago, I tried to mend it with Speed Sew fabric repair glue, but it didn’t hold, and the rip worsened every time I sat down until it reached this sorry situation:

The rest of the chair is fine, though, so I really needed to fix it somehow before the exposed foam started to disintegrate and made the chair unusable.

As my ‘fabric’ is cheap faux leather, I wasn’t sure if the leather-mending instructions would work, so I started with this tiny hole on the other side of the chair front, to test the method. I tried the ‘mending a tear in leather’ instructions but, although the instructions were fine, it quickly became apparent that it wouldn’t work in my case – the pleather tore with any stress on it, so I ended up having to make large whipstitches over the top of the hole to keep it together. Result: a mended hole, but not a pretty one.

Tiny hole, before and after stitching

By this point, I could tell that fixing the giant rip neatly was not an option, so I decided to go for a functionally creative mend, using patching and gluing techniques from the book in addition to trying to sew the hole so it would stay closed.

I cut some black webbing to fit inside the gaps, and then slowly glued a section of the seat cover to the webbing, and stitched the hole closed. The rip was so large that pulling the sides together was extremely difficult, especially as the seat fabric ripped if the stitches were too close to the ripped edge. I found that making large stitches through the fabric and into the webbing was the best bet – the stitches kept the fabric in place against the webbing while the glue dried, and added support for the glue.

It was a long, hard job – stitching through thick webbing with a thin curved upholstery needle is hard work, but a thicker needle would have damaged the pleather even more, so I persevered. And here’s the result:

No, it’s certainly not pretty, but it all holds together: my frankenstitches feel very stable with the glued webbing to back them up, and I think I’ve succeeded in saving the chair – the foam shouldn’t degrade any more now it’s safely hidden away. Now I just need to crochet a seat cover to hide the frankenstitches, and my chair will be as good as new 🙂

I’d ignored these problem for months, but having a book of mending techniques at my disposal makes me feel like I can tackle these things. Next I’m going to try fixing a too-loose zip that keeps falling down!

Peeves

• There’s a lot of information contained in the 200+ pages of this book, and some of the chapter headings are a bit broad and unclear (e.g. the Surface Fixes chapter includes fixes for snags and pulls, how to fix a patch pocket, 2 different project examples of adding new patch pockets, and instructions for re-pleating a skirt, while the Getting Fancy chapter includes lace, leather and stretch fabric repair). A one-sentence summary of each chapter on the Contents page would have been very helpful – I’d never have thought to look in ‘Getting Fancy’ to find the leather repair instructions! – so I definitely recommend consulting the index if you’re looking for something in particular.
• I have a very understated taste in clothing and I can’t imagine using any of the project ideas on my own clothes. They’d definitely be a fun way to extend the life of children’s clothing – which are much more likely to need mending anyway – or if you have a less conservative dress sense than me. Having said that, if I look at the projects as embellishment tutorials instead of mending tutorials, I could adapt them for decorating cushions, bags, etc, so they still have some value to me.

Final Thoughts

Mend It Better: Creative Patching, Darning, and Stitching has plenty of eye candy and project ideas for creative mending, upcycling and embellishing. For me, though, the real value of this book is in the well-explained techniques that will let you fix and mend common problems and make alterations to get more mileage out of your clothing (and also luggage and even upholstered furniture: although the book focuses on clothing, the techniques can obviously apply to any repairs of fabric, zips, buttons etc).

The techniques explained here are absolutely worth the purchase price, even if none of the projects appeal to you, so I recommend Mend It Better as a solid reference for a variety of sewing and mending techniques. I’ll be keeping my copy in my reference library, so I’ll have more confidence in attempting fixes and alterations for my clothes, and I’ll be well prepared next time I have a mending emergency!

I won the eBook version of this book through its blog tour, so I decided to review it for you. The following, as always, is based on my honest opinions!

Overview

Simply Crochet: 22 Stylish Designs for Every Day by Robyn Chachula is a crochet project book built around an unusual but useful premise: stash-busting! The 22 projects are split by the number of balls of yarn each uses: eight 1 ball projects, seven 2-3 ball projects, and seven 4-5 ball projects.

Partly because it includes patterns contributed by 15 crochet designers, there’s a real variety of projects in this book, including garments for women and children, and wearable and home accessories. This means that, while you probably won’t want to make all the included designs, there’s something for everyone here, and you’re bound to find some projects that you’d like to make. And you’ll also find a variety of techniques: thread crochet, tapestry crochet, tunisian crochet, motif-based designs, felting.

Here’s a selection of the designs that most appealed to me:

L-R: Tunisian Neck Lattice by Vashti Braha; Annabel Shawl by Kristin Omdahl; Linked Jacket by Robyn Chachula

And, as I clearly gravitate towards a certain style, here are some of the other designs, to give you a more complete picture of the variety of patterns:

L-R: Tallula Baby Top by Marlaina Bird; Dots and Dashes Baby Blanket by Ellen Gormley; Flapper Hat by Margaret Hubert

As with all Interweave books, it looks elegant and is clearly laid out. The patterns are easy to follow and all include Robyn’s excellent stitch diagrams and schematics. Tips from each of the featured designers on making the most of your yarn stash and crocheting on a budget are also scattered throughout the book.

As the book is intended to be used for stash-busting, the yarn requirements for each project give the weight of the yarn used in the design e.g. ‘Sportweight (#3 Light)’ as well as the specific yarn used for the sample. (I think this is a very useful addition that should be included in all crochet books, to make it easier for you to substitute yarns.)

Although there is a short section at the back of the book with descriptions of the stitches used, I wouldn’t choose this as a learn-to-crochet book. But, as a project-based book for crocheters, I think it works very well.

My Experience

Being short on time and looking for something I’m not too familiar with, I decided to test out Robyn Chachula’s Mystic Cuff (p27). I don’t dabble in thread crochet often, as gripping the work tightly enough to force my hook into the tiny spaces plays havoc with my hands, so I’ve never made anything doily-like before.

Mystic Cuff by Robyn Chachula (large text added by me to obscure the pattern!)

I have tiny wrists so I figured I’d need to adapt the pattern so the cuff wouldn’t fall off my hand. Here, I ran into a little problem: the gauge section only gives the finished cuff measurement, which means I’d have to complete the entire cuff to find out if my gauge matched Robyn’s, and then adjust the pattern (or my hook) and restart accordingly. It would have been helpful to have a gauge measurement as the size after Rnd 1, or even a guide as to what wrist size it fits (the cuff overlaps itself, so the finished measurement is larger than the wrist size) so I’d know much earlier if I needed to start over to match the gauge.

As my hands wouldn’t tolerate crocheting two cuffs in thread, I decided to assume my gauge was close enough and make my cuff smaller by dropping one repeat. My only other change was to substitute a larger crochet hook (2.25mm) for the foundation chain, as I knew I’d have problems working back into those chains if I made them with the recommended 1.5mm hook. And then I got to crocheting…

I found Robyn’s stitch diagram to be so clear that you could easily complete the cuff without reading a word (apart from how and when to attach the beads). I always prefer to check the written instructions too as I go, to make sure I haven’t misunderstood anything in the diagram, and I did find a couple of errors here in the way the repeats were structured (an extra dc2tog at the end of Rnd 3, and a missing ch 2 at the end of Rnd 4). However, the stitch diagram was correct in both cases, and is clear enough that I doubt many people would use the written instructions anyway. (I notified Interweave about the errors, so I expect Simply Crochet will be added to their Crochet Book Corrections page shortly.)

Aside from those minor glitches, which were easy to fix with a glance at the stitch diagram, the cuff came together very smoothly. I’d never seen beads attached in this way before – it was a very elegant method (although a bit tricky to guess how many chains were covered by each bead, so I made my starting chain too long, just in case, and unravelled the extra chains later). I finished the cuff easily. It took me 4 days because I didn’t want to risk giving myself longer-term hand pain, but it would be a very fast project if you don’t have hand problems like mine!

Isn’t it lovely?

Now for the bad news. It turns out that my gauge was way off: 20% smaller! That means that I could have made the cuff with no modifications, and it probably would have been only slightly too large for me… As it is, my modified cuff barely meets around my wrist, let alone has the overlap needed for the clasp. This is the only pattern in the book that doesn’t give a gauge swatch measurement, probably because the finished project is smaller than a typical swatch size, but it would have been helpful to know sooner that my gauge was so much tighter than Robyn’s. Even after blocking, it was still far too small, so I had to come up with a different method to affix the cuff around my wrist (I bent an eye pin into a tiny hook shape and stitched it to one end of the cuff):

I think my bent-pin solution for my too-small cuff is quite elegant!

The Mystic Cuff is a very pretty design. For most people, it’d be a quick enough project to whip up another one if your gauge was off – and you could give the original ‘gauge swatch’ (i.e. finished cuff) to a friend with a smaller or larger wrist. My complaint with the gauge is really only because of my own difficulties with thread crochet and hand pain, so making it once was enough for me, but now I have a solution for my sizing error, I’m very happy with my modified version:

My finished Mystic Cuff

Peeves

There’s not much to criticise here! Aside from the small errors I noted above (which I’m sure will be fixed with errata shortly) I only noted a couple of things:

• The Billows of Baubles scarf (p19) is worked in stainless steel yarn, which isn’t something that’s commonly available, so I doubt it figures in many people’s stashes. As this is supposed to be a ‘use up your stash’ book, it would have been nice if there was a note about how the scarf might look if crocheted with a non-steel yarn of the same weight – it obviously wouldn’t be “an elegant sculptural accessory” as described.
• The Linked Jacket (p129) mentions 2 hooks and eyes in the materials list. In one photo, it shows each side of the hooks and eyes attached to some sort of backing fabric or ribbon, however there’s no mention in the instructions of attaching the hooks and eyes. A little guidance as to placement of the fastenings, and whether that backing fabric is required (and if so what to use for it) would have been helpful.

Final Thoughts

Simply Crochet is a stylish book of crochet patterns featuring a nice variety of modern designs. The instructions are all clearly written and charted, the photos are clear and elegant, and the yarn weight and yardage info make it much easier to substitute yarns than in many other crochet books.

Sometimes pattern books can be very focused: all hats; all afghans; all one weight of yarn; all using one technique. If you’re looking for a project-based book featuring many different options for size, style, technique, and yarn weight, Simply Crochet will definitely fit the bill. Although it’s unlikely that every project in the book will appeal to you, there’s plenty of variety here to keep any crocheter interested!

Let’s get this out of the way first: I was given a copy of this book to review. But I’m not being compensated for this review in any other way, and the following is based on my honest opinions!

Overview

Crafting With Cat Hair: Cute Handicrafts to Make with Your Cat by Kaori Tsutaya was originally published in Japanese, and has now been translated into English by Amy Hirschman. When they say “…to make with your cat” they really mean it, as all the projects in this book are designed to be created from the excess fur that’s removed when you brush your cat.

Cover, showing cat hair finger puppet

The included projects are:

• Finger puppets
• Book covers
• Cat portraits
• Tote bags
• Coin purses
• Knickknack boxes
• Pincushions
• Badges
• Mittens & gloves
• Hats & scarves

Note: the amazon description also mentions cat toys and photo frames, but this is incorrect.

My favourite project: pretty pincushions

Aside from the finger puppets, which are made by wet-felting, each project includes patterns to needle-felt the cat shapes onto the finished item, and some also include embellishments (eyes, collars, bells, etc).

Between each project, there’s an information spread. These cover the benefits of brushing your cat, a comparison of cat hair and sheep’s wool, seasonal shedding variations, and more. The info sections are brief and easy to read, and include lots of cat photos to enjoy.

Cat-embellished mini tote bags

Note: the publisher’s blurb says “All the projects are cat-friendly, eco-friendly, and require no special equipment or training”. But, for any of these projects apart from the finger puppets, you will need what I consider to be specialized equipment: a felting needle and some kind of foam or sponge to stab it into.

My Experience

Before I start, I should introduce you to the real star of this review, my handsome boy Maui:

Maui enjoying the South African sunshine – it’s a hard life…

I’d been collecting Maui’s fur for a couple of years, in case I thought of something to do with it, but then I moved abroad and decided to throw it all away before moving. Of course, now there’s something I could have done with it! Luckily Maui is a fur generator, and graciously consented to being brushed every day for a week so I could save his fur to test-drive this book for you. He’s a short-haired cat, so if his fur will work for these projects, I’m pretty sure that it’ll work for any cat hair.

From looking through the book, I got the impression that creating a clear outline for your needle-felted silhouette seems to be the hardest part, so I picked one of the largest patterns to give me the best chance of making it look good (the cat pattern that goes with the Coin Purse, p51). It’s nice that several cat shapes are provided for most of the projects, so you can choose a pose that looks like your own cat – the one I chose was very Maui-ish. I used a sheet of acrylic felt as my base, as I’m sensitive to wool. I gathered up my small pile of Maui’s fur, and I got to work.

I do have a little experience with needlefelting (I made a mini guinea pig), so I can tell you that needle-felting with cat hair is definitely much slower than with wool. The claim of “quick and quirky” projects is a little overly optimistic, in my opinion. Cat hair doesn’t really want to be felted; it takes more stabbing to get the strands to mesh together. But it does work, eventually!

I felt that the needlefelting instructions were a little brief – if I didn’t already know better I’d have assumed from reading the instructions that I’d stab the needle in a few times to anchor the fur, and that would be it. (If you don’t already know, you have to stab over and over again, all over the surface, to mesh all the strands together into a solid fabric.) There’s also no safety warning in the book, which I think is an oversight – this is a sharp serrated needle you’re stabbing very close to your fingers, and you do need to be vigilant. (Ask me how I know this…)

Pretty kitty silhouette (with the dreaded stabbing device)

It took me about an hour of stabbing to make my small cat silhouette (just over 2″ long), and it’s not perfect – it’s very tricky to make the edges neat, and perfectionism has no place here. You can see stray hairs around the edges and they really don’t like to be tamed; I may have been able to improve it further, but I took my stabbed finger as a sign to stop. Even so, it is adorable: it’s a sweet little silhouette of my Maui, made from his own fur! This is very special and I will treasure it.

The back looks similar, but more fluffy and less defined

The back (above) looks almost as good as the front! I’m not convinced that the cat hairs have matted together at all; it seems more like stabbing them through to the back of the felt has pinned the hairs into place. (FYI, the cheap acrylic craft felt stood up to all the stabbing with no problems, so don’t be afraid to use it as a base to needlefelt onto.)

I haven’t decided how to finish my piece: I may add a felt border and some simple embroidery, inspired by the Badges project (p66), or make or find a frame for it, à la Portraits (p36), or maybe a combination of the two. I also considered adding eyes and a tiny embroidered nose, but I think I’ll leave it as is; simple is sometimes better. If I change my mind, I’ll flip through the book again to give me ideas!

Peeves

Although there are 10 projects in this book, 1 involves wet-felting and the other 9 are all needle-felting projects. Yes, there are directions for making a pincushion, bag, coin purse, felt pin, etc, but the actual cat hair part of each of these projects is exactly the same: needle-felt a cat silhouette to the project you’ve made, or to a bought garment. This may be an inbuilt limitation of trying to craft with cat hair, as opposed to any lack of imagination on the part of the author: cat hair is too short to spin into yarn (unless you have a long-haired cat) and, as the book explains, it doesn’t felt as firmly as wool, so it may be that these limited projects are really all you can do with it. (I previously tried to make a felt ball with some of Maui’s fur, and, although it looked like it had felted firmly while it was wet, once it had dried some hairs popped out around the edges, and it really wasn’t pretty enough to do anything with.) Still, I had been hoping for a little more variety with what to do with the cat hair.

If you’ve never needle-felted before, I’d suggest you look up instructions online before you begin, and please, please be careful with the sharp needle!

After seeing how fluffy the finished piece is compared with felted wool, I’m also not entirely convinced how well the cat hair felt would hold up on any kind of garment or item that gets heavy use – I suspect you may end up shedding cat hair wherever you go..! But the ideas and the silhouettes are all very cute, so here’s my suggestion to get more mileage from the book: you could always use the provided cat silhouettes and instructions to needle-felt wool roving to your hat and mittens instead of the cat hair, to get a sturdier result, and maybe save the cat hair for the more ornamental projects.

Final Thoughts

I see one huge reason to buy this book: cat owners will go crazy for a little felted something made with their own sweet kitty’s fur! I love the little silhouette I made with Maui’s fur, and I’m sure that your non-crafty cat-mad friends and relatives would be equally delighted with a little replica ornament of their beloved feline companions – it would make a great Christmas gift (although maybe not a surprise, as you’ll need to gather a few days’ worth of cat fur brushings in advance)!

Crafting With Cat Hair is definitely a specialised book, and one that only cat-lovers will appreciate. But it’s fun to read for the cat info and photos, and the projects, while a little limited in scope, are very cute. If you like needlefelting, or want to try it for the first time, and you, or someone you know, loves cats, you’ll probably enjoy this book 🙂