Hello! This week I've been playing about with adding pretty Liberty fabric to one of my crochet projects and I've been having a lot of fun with it! I love the way that fabric totally changes the way a crocheted item looks and how the different texture & surface pattern brings the whole thing to life.
The project I've been working on is an amigurumi wolf pattern. She is called Iris and she is the follow up to Agnes the bunny pattern that I created in 2017. The Agnes pattern includes a photo of the bunny wearing a Liberty Tana Lawn dress with the caption "Feeling creative? Why not make your bunny a dress!" - I certainly wasn't feeling creative or experienced enough at the time to write up the instructions for the dress I had cobbled together!
Fast forward 4 years and I decided to create another amigurumi pattern in a similar style to Agnes. I decided on a wolf because I knew the proportions would work out similarly and because wolves have large enough ears to embelish with fabric. Don't worry, she's definitely a friendly wolf!
I used Agnes the bunny as a template for the main body parts which gave me the opportunity to refresh her pattern at the same time (as I've mentioned here before, my pattern writing style has changed in the last few years and it's much more consistent now). Obviously the ears, snout and tail are very different and I had fun designing those elements. I used the same yarn as I had for the bunny, but a different colourway - Juniper Moon Farm extra fine baby alpaca in Travertine. Agnes is free to download from Lovecrafts here and from Ravelry here (please note that Ravelry may cause issues for people with visual disturbances, proceed with caution).
For Iris' ears I used Liberty Tana Lawn in Ffion because I had a little scrap left over from an english paper piecing project which was the right size. When it came to the dress I couldn't choose between Betsy (the grey pattern) and Poppy and Daisy (the brighter red, yellow & blue pattern) so I popped a poll in my Instagram stories to see what my follwers liked best. The vote was a near 50/ 50 split so I decided to make 2 dresses, one in each fabric! Which one do you prefer? Let me know in the comments.
I used my sewing machine to make the prototype dress in Poppy and Daisy and besides a few minor adjustments I was happy with how it went. For the Betsy dress I wanted to make it entirely by hand, firstly to check it was possible and secondly because it's easier to stop and start for taking photos. The dress pattern will be accompanied with step-by-step photos because I want it to be as clear as possible to follow.
The good news is that the dress pattern will fit Agnes the bunny and Iris the wolf which I am really chuffed about! At the moment the entire pattern is with my testing team and when I have their feedback and once I've done the official photo shoot the pattern will be ready to release - hopefully in the next couple of weeks.
Until next time,
Marta xx
