My first book, Paper Chains & Garlands, was published in 2009. It was released as a kit with several rolls and sheets of paper and was available exclusively through the US-based bookstore chain Barnes & Noble. This meant that it was only available within the US, and when it sold out within a year, Barnes and Noble chose not to reprint it, so it’s been unavailable since 2010.

I’ve finally been able to re-acquire the rights to my content, and I’m very excited to announce that I’ve repackaged Paper Chains & Garlands as an ebook that you can buy as a PDF file, directly from PlanetJune!

Paper Chains & Garlands: Easy to make decorations, for parties, holidays, and home décor is an original ebook by June Gilbank.

Turn your next celebration into a creatively crafted occasion to remember. Create delightful decorations on themes that range from the seasonal (snowflakes, autumn leaves, cherry blossoms) to the decorative (pleated flowers, pinwheels, elephants). The illustrated instructions by expert crafter June Gilbank show you how to fold, cut, unfurl, and string chains and garlands like a pro. With tips on how to cut simple paper dolls as well as elegant Chinese lanterns, Paper Chains and Garlands is the perfect craft book for expert crafters as well as beginners.

(Want more details? Click through to my shop to view the complete Table of Contents and reviews of the first edition.)

Second Edition: What’s New?

The new second edition ebook is even better than the original book, as I’ve fully revised and updated it, and it now includes bonus content and 10 pages of printable templates that are sized to print correctly onto either A4 or letter-sized paper and available in multiple sizes so you can easily create your paper decorations in a size you like.

Simply print the template you want, at the size you want, onto a sheet of cardstock and cut it out to create a long-lasting reusable template that you can draw around over and over again, to make as many decorations as you need!

Upgrade from the First Edition

Are you now kicking yourself because you bought the old, inferior, first edition? Don’t worry: if you can prove you bought my original Paper Chains and Garlands (email me a copy of e.g. your till receipt, a photo of you holding the book, or your order confirmation email from B&N) I’ll send you a discount code worth a massive 60% off the second edition – it’s definitely worth upgrading to have those printable templates and a handy PDF version!

Make Easy and Fun Papercrafts

If you’ve been looking for some fun craft projects to try with the kids, inexpensive ways to decorate for parties and holidays, or just want an easy introduction to papercrafting, look no further. Try your hand at origami, papercutting, and a variety of other papercrafting techniques, all explained in my clear, easy-to-follow style with step-by-step illustrations.

What are you waiting for? Pick up your copy now and enjoy some papercrafting! 🙂

I’m so happy to announce a new facet of the PlanetJune world today: PlanetJune Papercraft! My papercraft tutorials are an easy and fun way to make pretty, decorative items from little more than a few pieces of paper.

Unlike crochet, there’s no real learning curve to my paper tutorials – you can jump straight into any of them even if you’ve never made anything from paper before, and still get a great result. And you probably have all the basic materials – paper, scissors, glue – at home already!

 My paper background: Folding Trees

You may remember Folding Trees, the papercraft site I co-founded, together with my friend and colleague Eve Henley, in mid-2008, at a time when paper crafts were often neglected among modern crafters. We saw the need to showcase that paper crafting encompasses much more than just scrapbooking, and our goals were to collect the best tutorials, highlight inspirational paper creations from talented artists and crafters, and share our own paper crafts and tutorials.

We accomplished our mission to bring modern, stylish paper crafts to the world. Folding Trees played a significant role in the resurgence of papercrafting in the online crafting community and led to my first book deal (for the sadly long out-of-print Paper Chains and Garlands – which is soon to be revived in a second edition as a brand new ebook… watch this space for details).

Since we closed Folding Trees at the end of 2009, I’ve run it as an archive, but it’s taking time I can no longer justify spending, so we decided that now is the right time to close down the site for good. More and more of the tutorials we originally linked to have moved to a new URL or disappeared altogether, and maintaining the site has become a drain on my already limited time.

PlanetJune Papercraft

When one door closes, another opens… 

I’ve remade, revised and repackaged my best original tutorials from Folding Trees as PlanetJune donationware, so if you like papercrafting, or would like to try it out, take a look at my tutorials for some easy, fun and attractive paper projects!

And next week it’ll be even more exciting, when I’ll re-release my long out of print book Paper Chains & Garlands in a fully-revised second edition as a PlanetJune Papercraft-exclusive ebook!

It’s been fun getting back to my papercrafty roots over the past few months to get all this set up and prepared, and now PlanetJune Papercraft is here (and I’ve figured out a new and very easy to understand way to present origami-type instructions) I’m sure you’ll be seeing more paper tutorials from me in the future too!

I hope you’ll enjoy my paper tutorials – please click through to PlanetJune Papercraft to see what I have on offer. And if you’d like to see more PlanetJune Papercraft in the future, please leave a comment and let me know…

Before I start, I’d just like to say Happy Thanksgiving to my fellow Canadians!

This is sweater #7 of my ‘learn to knit by making a dozen self-designed sweaters’ project. (Here are links to #1, #2, #3, #4, #5 and #6, if you’d like to see my progress.)

This cardigan demonstrates the difference between being inspired by someone else’s design, and copying it. I’d seen a cardigan (Primavera by Sarah Cooke) and really liked certain aspects of it, namely the light fingering-weight yarn and the lace panel that runs right up to the shoulders.

I like the idea of combining a lightweight cardigan for summer with a more open stitch pattern, but the pattern I’d seen wasn’t a cardigan for me: the length is far too long for my short frame; the neckline is way too open; I don’t like decorative pockets; I prefer internal shaping to side shaping. So I just took the basic concept (v-neck fingering-weight raglan cardigan with a lace panel up each arm) and designed one using my own measurements and stitch patterns. If you compare my cardigan with my inspiration, you’ll see that it’s completely different; not a copy at all.

After the success of my small 5-stitch, 4-row lace panel on my purple cardigan, I decided to try being a bit more adventurous, and picked a 16-stitch, 16-row repeat lace panel to travel up the arms of this cardigan.

While beautiful, this was quite an eye-opener for me! I found myself utterly unable to memorize the stitch pattern, and had to refer to the pattern for every row of both sleeves. This was not the relaxing knitting I’ve been enjoying (although the end result is pretty spectacular, so it was worth it). I’d certainly tackle another project with lace panels, but I can’t see an all-over lace pattern in my future, unless the stitch pattern is much simpler so it’s easier to memorise.

As I’m still a relative novice, it took me a long time to be able to ‘read’ the stitches of the previous rows so I could recognise which row of the lace pattern I’d reached. Several times, I had to rip back a few rows when I realised I’d repeated a pair of rows and skewed the lace pattern. But worst of all was when I held up my two-thirds finished sleeve to admire how amazingly magical lace is, and suddenly noticed I’d repeated a pair of rows right down by the cuff..! I’m not the kind of person who can live with the knowledge of a massive mistake like that, so I gritted my teeth and pulled out hours of work so I could fix it.

I’m not a fan of raglans, because they make it tricky to control the fit through the shoulders, but I really wanted to continue the lace panels right up to the neckband of this cardigan, and a raglan seam is the way to do that. On a whim, I decided to make the raglan seams a defined feature instead of trying to minimise them, forming strong diagonal bands from underarm to neck to contrast with the lace, and I quite like the result.

I worked 1×1 rib (first time!) bands from my provisionally cast-off cuff and bottom band edges, then picked up stitches (another first!) for the button band.

A left-handed aside…

Being a left-hander who knits right-handed, certain techniques in knitting don’t work properly for me, because I can’t do them with my right hand. My provisional cast-ons (done with a crochet hook) are twisted, so they can’t be pulled out cleanly – that’s because I have to hold the hook in my left hand instead of my right. I’m also utterly unable to pick up and knit by picking up from right to left; my right hand just doesn’t have the fine control.

As I spot these things, I can try to work out how to fix them so I have a way to knit that works for me and my limitations. I’ve discovered that I can pick up and knit with my left hand instead, then switch to right-handed knitting; I just have to concentrate so I remember to twist each stitch to the right-handed direction as I pick it up. Next I have to try to do the same for my provisional cast-on!

I tried one more new technique for this cardigan: Ysolda’s one row buttonhole. I’ll definitely be using this one again.

I’m not 100% convinced about my button choices here; I love the buttons, but they may not be the ideal choice for this cardigan – I think a faded blue might look better here. I’ll probably end up swapping the buttons eventually (I’ll keep an eye out for a better match, or make some from polymer clay) but I’ll keep these tiny anchor buttons I used on the back. I always seem to manage to find the perfect anchor buttons in my button stash. At last: I have a use for all those boring tiny buttons!

Keeping it real: another mistake photo, but the cardigan looks good! (My camera is remote-controlled by an app on my phone…)

Overall though, I’m very pleased with how this one turned out! I’ve finished it at the perfect time for spring in South Africa, so I can see this becoming my staple lightweight cardigan to throw on over a T-shirt.

This sweater knitting project was one of the best ideas I’ve ever had: I’m learning so much with every new piece, and becoming a much more confident knitter. There’s still a long way to go before I’d consider myself truly proficient, but I’m loving every step of this journey.

I hope you’re enjoying following along with my progress, and maybe I’ve inspired you to knit/crochet/sew a garment for yourself too? Give it a go!

When I made my commissioned Sloth design, I had to decide between the two types of Sloth: Two-Toed and Three-Toed. I decided to go with the Three-Toed for my design, but I secretly wished I had time to make a Two-Toed as well…

Although my crocheted sloths don’t have any toes, the markings and nose shape of each type of sloth makes them look very different, although their basic body shapes are the same. This means we have an excellent candidate for a new Expansion Pack, to convert the standard Three-Toed Sloth into a Two-Toed Sloth:

If you aren’t too familiar with sloths – they are very strange creatures! – I refer you to my Sloth Fun Facts from my original Sloth blog post 🙂

Just like my original Sloth, the Two-Toed has jointed limbs and feet that clip together so he can hang around:

And I have to admit it – this is the real reason I always wanted to make two sloths: when you have two sloths (a matched set, or one of each), your sloths can hug each other:

Awww! Cutest thing ever?

My Two-Toed Sloth uses a special technique to give him nostrils crocheted right into his muzzle – it’s subtle, but gives a nice effect that doesn’t rely on embroidery or any other embellishment techniques. As with the original Sloth, there are only 6 pieces to crochet, and the jointed limbs mean you only have one piece to sew on at the end – very satisfying!

What is an Expansion Pack?

• An Expansion Pack is an add-on to an existing PlanetJune pattern.
• The Expansion Pack lets you modify or add to the original pattern to create something else.
• You cannot use the Expansion Pack alone – you must also purchase the original pattern in order to be able to complete the pictured items in the Expansion Pack pattern.

You can buy the Two-Toed Sloth Expansion Pack for only $2.50 individually from the shop, or, if you haven’t yet bought the (three-toed) Sloth pattern, you can buy the multipack of both sloths, and save 50c on the pair.

Launch Discount

If you’ve already bought the original Sloth, you won’t be able to save that 50c. But, for 7 days only, add the Two-Toed Sloth Expansion Pack pattern to your shopping cart, together with anything else (totalling $5 or more), then use the code SLOTHLOVE at checkout and you’ll still get your discount! (Valid until next Tuesday: 13th October 2015.)

Note: If you don’t need anything else right now, this also applies to Gift Certificate purchases, so you can pick up a $5 gift certificate now, get your discount, and have $5 in your PlanetJune account ready for your next purchase, or to send to a crocheting friend!

I’m so happy to finally have a complete set of sloths. If you’re not ready to make your Sloth family just yet, don’t forget to heart and queue them on Ravelry so you don’t forget about them:

Three-Toed Sloth (original): 

Two-Toed Sloth (new):

What do you think? Aren’t hugging amigurumi sloths just the cutest thing?!

New Press

Simply Crochet magazine wrote about my Pine Cone Collection pattern in their October issue:

Are you pining for autumn patterns? Then you’ll love these simple little pine cones. We were astounded by how well these crochet creations capture the texture of prickly pine cones, thus proving that Pumpkin Spice Lattes aren’t the most exciting thing about autumn (maybe). The Pine Cone Collection PDF pattern is by talented designer and blogger June Gilbank. Just visit www.planetjune.com to find June’s blog and a vast library of free and paid-for patterns, as well as crochet tutorials. You could hook a bunch of them in natural tones this month to herald the arrival of autumn and they’ll also look brilliant come Christmas.

Thanks Simply Crochet! If you really are pining (ha!) for autumn patterns, you can pick up my Pine Cone Collection pattern (and/or the Giant Pint Cone Expansion Pack) from my shop right now 🙂

Free-For-All CAL Report

We had a huge variety of patterns chosen for this anything-goes CAL over the summer, and all the projects looked lovely! Here’s a sampling of the CAL entries (click the pic to see them all on Ravelry):

Ami Animals CAL

If you’d like to join the October PlanetJune CAL, the theme is animals, and I’ve got you covered with a massive range of 109 patterns to choose from! Whether you prefer cats and dogs, dinosaurs and lizards, cute pets or unusual wild animals, I’ve got something for you…

The photo above shows a small selection of your choices; to see them all, visit the animal crochet patterns page of my shop 🙂

Then meet us in the PlanetJune Ravelry group and join the crochet-along!

Review and Win contest

You’re automatically entered in the next monthly draw every time you write a review for a PlanetJune pattern you’ve enjoyed – and you’ll also be helping future customers make an informed decision about patterns they are considering buying.

As I didn’t post a monthly update in September, I have two winners to announce today 🙂

August’s winner is Katherine W‘s review of my Dinosaurs Set 1 patterns:

I’m a beginner at crochet and this was my first time using a pattern, and first time trying amigurumi. Had to learn half the techniques used! But thankfully the pattern was very clear and easy to follow, and Junes video tutorials were all I needed to make a super cute Brachiosaurus. Will definitely be making more 🙂

And September’s winner is Jaclyn M‘s review of my Orca (Killer Whale) pattern:

As soon as I saw this pattern, I knew that I had to have it…and I am very glad that I purchased it! If you are okay with color changes, this pattern is clear and easy to follow; even if you aren’t okay with color changes, June does a great job explaining how the color changes work for this pattern. The shaping of the fins is gorgeous and realistic!

Congratulations, Katherine and Jaclyn – I’ve emailed you both to find out which pattern you’d like as your prize!

What’s Next?

I have a cute new amigurumi pattern coming soon, and two new PlanetJune Accessories on their way, plus I’m working on my Christmas design to make sure it’s ready for you in plenty of time before that last-minute Christmas rush! So I’ll have plenty to keep me occupied over the coming weeks…

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.

In January 2015, I released my AmiCats Collection, and their reception has blown me away – in well under a year, they’re already within my top 20 bestselling patterns of all time!

Sometimes you strike gold with a design, and this was definitely one of those times, but it wasn’t just a lucky break; it was the result of an unprecedented amount of work, and my most difficult challenge to date.

I mentioned at the time of release that it took me more than a dozen prototypes over a period of three years to complete these designs to my satisfaction. Let’s look back at some of the development stages, so you can appreciate the process that finally got me to the AmiCats you see today, and see how far removed they are from my first (terrible) attempts at making a cat!

This is a story of dogged persistence and refusal to admit defeat, even though there were moments where I thought I’d set myself an impossible task…

Initial Research & Prototyping

Although I’ve always been a cat person and have loved cats my whole life, I’d never really examined their overall shape that closely. I started out, as always, with research, and sketched some basic cat studies to give me a better idea of cat poses and movement.

A few of my initial quick sketches

I narrowed the position down to a sitting-up pose, as I felt this was a typically feline pose – like the way a cat sits when it’s watching something out of a window.

After 3 or 4 prototypes, I felt I had a good clever cat design. The body had a strong kidney shape to allow the legs to sit directly beneath the chest instead of splaying out in front of the body, and the muzzle – unlike a dog’s – was tiny and triangular. I completed assembly of my design, taking all the step-by-step photos that would go into the pattern as I went, and thought it was pretty much finished.

Not one of these photos appears in the final patterns!

Then I showed a photo of my prototype to a trusted friend, and she said ‘it’s nice, but it looks kind of like a wolf cub’. And she was right, of course! Try not to laugh too hard, now:

Woof?

Somehow, despite my efforts at clever design, the essence of ‘feline’ was missing, and I was so close to the design I hadn’t noticed how terribly wrong it had gone until I stepped back and took a proper look at the result.

I decided that my design was missing the fluidity of a cat – you don’t see a cat’s haunches and muzzle as defined shapes, and crocheting them separately lost the smooth lines that are so distinctly ‘cat’.

And there was another problem niggling at me: the front legs had proven fairly difficult to attach smoothly to avoid an awkward crease where they joined the chest. If this gave me problems, with my years of experience of stitching pieces together as smoothly as possible, would it be fair to inflict that on my customers? Of course not.

Major Redesign

With all this in mind, I set myself the challenge of going back to the drawing board to solve these problems. My goal was to reproduce the exact shape of my cat prototype, using completely different shapes and techniques that would give a seamless feline appearance without needing amazing sewing skills…

1. The muzzle shaping is now built into the face
2. The front legs and body are crocheted together smoothly
3. The haunches are built into the body shape

I truly thought I’d nailed it with this prototype – the overall shape was very similar to the previous prototype, but it looked so much better and smoother than my previous attempt! And this cat (nicknamed Proto Kitty) was the basis for the final AmiCats, but of course the story doesn’t end there…

Design Refinement

I began to crochet the ‘final’ cats, developing the colourways and marking patterns as I went. I also spent hours watching my cat Maui, feeling his bone structure and trying to analyse his shape more closely, as I still had that nagging feeling I was missing something.

I’d started all the cats, and completed the two below, before I began to have doubts about the shape of them (although these cats were pretty cute!)

1. The eyes stuck out too much from the head
2. The chest was underdeveloped
3. The front legs were too long and chunky and splayed forwards more than I’d like
4. The front paws were overly-large, giving the cats too much of a kittenish look
5. The straight back didn’t have that unquestionably feline curve

These niggles didn’t all present themselves at once, so I made many more prototypes as I refined and further refined my design to tweak the shaping to create subtle eye sockets, reduce the size of the paws and the length and thickness of the front legs while bulking out the chest, add that magical cat curve to the back, and create a completely new innovative leg-joining technique that keeps the legs sitting correctly beneath the cat.

With each of these changes, the cat shape grew slowly closer to what I’d hoped for when I began this project, and I started to think that my impossible task may just work out after all….

Resting Period

Finally, finally, I couldn’t find anything else I was unhappy with, and I left each cat sitting next to the TV as I finished it and continued to work on the rest, so I’d see them all the time and let any remaining niggles come to the front of my mind.

I had thought, once again, that they were finished, but this resting period wasn’t wasted: although even I thought I was crazy by this point, I remade the entire Calico cat so I could modify the markings slightly. In doing that I changed it from my least favourite cat to (possibly) the cutest of all – that last tweak is always worth it!

And, when all 4 were truly finished, I decided this was really it, and it was time to take a deep breath and bring my beautifully-shaped AmiCats into the world…

This was the scariest release date of my life, as these designs represented so much love and care, and I was terrified that everyone would be disappointed or critical of them. Thankfully, that wasn’t the case, and I’m as delighted as I am relieved to see people appreciating all the little details that took years to get just right and that make these patterns so unique.

The End?

Not necessarily! Even now, the collection isn’t complete the way I’d originally planned: AmiCats was originally conceived as an ebook, including 6 cat designs. In addition to the 4 standard-body-type designs you see in the AmiCats Collection, I’d intended to make one design each of the two other major body types: the shorter, wider, flat-faced exotic (e.g. a Persian) and the elongated, elegant, long-nosed oriental (e.g. a Siamese). The ebook was also to contain additional bonus supporting matter with embellishment options and examples (different eyes, whiskers, expressions, etc).

I devoted weeks to the prototypes for the other body types, but I still haven’t completed them to my satisfaction, so I made the executive decision that 4 perfect cats now are better than 6 perfect cats in another year or more, and I scrapped the ebook. Although that was a difficult decision, the work I’ve already invested in the remaining designs hasn’t necessarily been wasted: there’s always the possibility of my designing a second AmiCats Collection at some point in the future. (If there’s a particular type or breed of cat that you’d like me to consider for a possible new collection, please do let me know, so I can add it to my Ideas List.)

But, for now, I’m content to leave the AmiCats Collection as this set of four very special and meticulously-developed designs…

I hope you’ve found this 3-year design journey interesting! This project was an extreme example of my design process, partly because cats are so difficult to capture realistically, and partly because I was so invested in the result.

Although my designs usually take a few months (instead of a few years) to go from concept to completion, I always bring this tenacity to my work – whether I want to or not! – exploring alternatives until I’m satisfied that I’ve found the best balance between instructions that are easy to follow and results that are cute, realistic, and unmistakeably PlanetJune. 🙂

A couple of weeks ago, Dave and I had the privilege of going on a behind-the-scenes tour of the Two Oceans Aquarium in Cape Town. We’ve been members of the aquarium since we moved to South Africa, as it’s not only one of the top tourist attractions in Cape Town, but also plays a valuable role in marine conservation, research and education.