A few weeks ago, the dogs were being real beggy long before dinner time. I told the little one he was going to drive me batty, and then my brain got stuck on an idea.
A crocheted blue character with pink batwing shaped ears, black glasses, white fangs, a purple and black shirt, tan pants, and brown shoes sitting in front of a TV
I had to make an Amigurumi version of Batly from Eureeka’s Castle. I am fairly certain this is the first character I’ve created without a pattern. I usually tend to stick to food when I’m making it myself. So I decided to start with the smallest piece and work my way up from there so I wouldn’t get to that piece and then have to work impossibly tiny.
Tiny blue knitted tubes on gray knitting needles
That smallest piece happens to be the finger. After a few failed attempts to create them with a crochet hook, I decided I would just make teeny i-cord niblets my smallest double pointed needles.
Small blue crocheted hands sticking out of black crocheted sleeves
I then attached them with crochet stitches, offsetting the thumbs by a couple rows to give him the correct handshape. I finished the hands off and then worked the sleeve around the wrist and up the arm, creating a bit of a raglan top to the sleeve by ending them in a triangle. I stuffed those sleeves with yarn scraps because they were too narrow to really fill with polyfil.
Two crocheted brown pointed lump shapes
I then made roughly teardrop/ Hershey kiss-shaped shoes about the same size as the hands and stuffed them with scrap yarn as well.
A pair of arms with blue hands sticking out of sleeves and a pair of pants with brown shoes sticking out.
I made his pants bottom up in the same manner, giving them a cuff at the bottom with a row of double crochet stitches and attach gin them at the top. The pants I stuffed with a handful of pipe cleaners that will be important later.
The purple torso now connects the arms and pants
I gave him a proportional torso in purple because the puppet wears a two-tone track jacket, but I wanted to make it a little easier on myself at this point so I just made it a single piece. This part was the first bit I stuffed with polyfil.
The character with a finished head with a slightly open mouth, pink tongue, white fangs, black nose, and slightly buggy eyes
I worked the head from the bottom up. Everything seemed to be going ok up the chin. I made the inset for the mouth and the eyes based on a combination of what would fit the head and the smallest I could go. Things started going south, and ignored it and pressed on. I even made the ears and sewed everything together. But this head was entirely too small.
The body of the character with a pile of facial features next to it on a gray chair
I had to frog the head, and make it bigger. Luckily, I was able to make it to fit both the body and the pieces I had already made. The only piece I had to finish at the very end was the glasses, which I ended up figuring out how to shuttle tat so they would be small enough without completely frustrating me. Then, it was time to test the best part I built into him, considering it’s one of the character’s favorite activities.
Crocheted Batly hanging upside down by his knees from the top of a TV
He hangs upside down, thanks to the pipe cleaners in his legs! I wasn’t entirely sure this was going to work, because he kept getting heavier as I added pieces. But I used enough pipe cleaners that it worked. I am so excited about it that I’ve hung him upside down from one of my shelves instead of sitting him on it.
Casey Kay B 