Hey, ya'll! And here I am back again with another extreme amigurumi! I hadn't thought that I would ever make another one or that if I ever did, I would make one so soon after the sloth. But here he is, jumbo Freddy the Fox!
Shortly after I designed my
extreme sloth, I was contacted by Claire of
Wool Couture who offered to give me all the wool I needed if I would be willing to upsize my Freddy Fox. I, of course, said yes!
Claire sent me three beautiful colors of wool that were unbelievably perfect colors for my fox. She sent me 7 lbs. of the orange and a little over 2 lbs. of both the white and the black.
HERE is the wool I received. Altogether, over 11 lbs. of soft, luscious wool! Once finished, Freddy weighed a whopping 10 lbs.! I used a 40mm crochet hook that you can purchase
here on Claire's Etsy shop as well. It's still unbelievable to think that they have 50mm and 60mm ones available too! Can you imagine?
It took me quite a while to finally start working on him since I was so afraid that I wouldn't have enough wool to finish him, especially of the orange. But procrastinating won't make yarn magically multiply, so off I went!
The first thing I made was the head.
One thing to remember when making amigurumi and working with super chunky yarns is that you must think small if you want to achieve big things! When I made my extreme sloth, I thought that if I used my miniature Zippy Sloth pattern it would work up just fine. But, in reality, I had to downsize the pattern even more so that it wouldn't be ridiculously big and make me broke with the amount of wool I would've had to buy. The same thing happened with the fox. I made a tiny fox prototype out of regular worsted weight yarn, but when I actually got around to making the extreme fox, it became clear to me that I would need to make the head pattern even smaller than I had originally planned. It's the wool and hook size that makes it big, not the stitch count.
Here is the head just before I started the decreases.
Next, I created the muzzle. For his black nose, I took about 8 inches of leftover wool roving, spliced it in two and needle felted it down over the center of the nose with my Clover Amour needle felter.
This needle felter was a life saver, and although I didn't use it as much with the fox as I did with the sloth, I still couldn't have done it without it. You can buy one
here.
Ears were next, and these were not easy to get right. I wanted to make sure they were proportionally right and I had a hard time finding the appropriate stitch count for them.
Next was the body, then the arms, and finally the tail (which was another difficult challenge).
Here is the finished body. (Later on, I ended up adding one more round to it.)
He was finished, and I hadn't run out of yarn! In fact, I had 3.7 oz. of the orange leftover, 9.8 oz. of the cream, and over 1 lb. of the black.
Now it was time to put it all together! When I made the sloth, I needle felted all the body parts together, and needless to say, I ended up with a very delicate sloth that was hardly durable. I just knew there had to be some better way, though. And then my sister came home from college and she told me to sew the pieces together using regular worsted weight yarn (duh!). This actually worked out amazingly! I had worsted weight yarn in colors that matched the wool I had almost exactly. And it was way easier than trying to needle felt all the pieces down because that took forever and didn't last long. If I had wanted needle felting to work I would have had to felt each piece for hours. Thankfully that didn't happen.
To save wool, I didn't completely finish the head as you can see in the picture below. I stuffed him with hypoallergenic Poly-Fil. You might think that I used tons of this stuff, but I probably didn't use as much as you think. I didn't want to stuff it too firmly because I already loved the head shape I had achieved and stuffing it too much would have ruined that. Also, because the wool is so thick and has so much bulk to it, there wasn't a lot of empty space inside.
The first thing to go on were the eyes. Once again, I bought 40mm black safety eyes from Stacey's website,
Fresh Stitches as they are the perfect size! You can read all about Fresh Stitches
here. I knew I wouldn't be able to actually attach the safety eyes using the backings because the head was way too thick to allow for that. So instead, I used this special glue, Speed Sew, specially created for crafts and fabric! You can purchase it
here or on Amazon
here.
As you can see, I generously applied the glue to the back of the eye. (Warning: This glue smells like a stinky fish!)
I sewed the muzzle on with matching worsted weight yarn (I used acrylic in case you were wondering), making sure not to grab the entire stitch, just a good-sized clump near the bottom. This way it was hardly noticeable that I had used this method at all! I did the same thing for the ears, but I also needle felted them down a bit so that they would look more like a part of the head.
I stuffed the body and sewed it to the head. Poor Freddy!
Then I sewed the arms on. Because I wasn't going to be using the wool yarn tail for sewing, I cut both tails short and felted them down to the arm. Then, after sewing the arms to the body, I needle felted his paw tips together so he would look like my
original Freddy.
Last of all was the tail and this had to be sewed on more securely than anything else because it would need extra support being so heavy. I also needle felted the tail down for extra security.
Since the opening of the tail was quite large, I took some worsted weight yarn and wove it in and out of each stitch to create something kind of like a drawstring bag.
Then I pulled tight and voilà!
And here he is!
It was such a privilege to be able to make this extreme fox and I'm so glad I did it! Though I think I'll take a little break before beginning work on any more extreme creations. After exploring one extreme to the other, I definitely prefer the in between! Still, it was an experience that I wouldn't have wanted to miss.
Please be sure and check out Claire's Etsy shop
here or her website
here as she has some wonderful supplies (and lots of DIY kits) available!
Will YOU be trying extreme crocheting with anything? Maybe bulkier yarns with amigurumi? I'd love to see if you do!
~Holly :)
Disclaimer: The wool for this project was provided by Claire of Wool Couture, but all opinions expressed are 100% my own! :)
