Little Bunny for Little Lady G!

I don't know how to describe my niece to you, she's only 6 years old and her personality blows me away! She's a really, really outgoing extrovert and the mute button is really hard to find on her. I've decided to give her a nick name on this blog, so she will now for ever be known as Little Lady G. :-D she will love that! The reasons being, her initial is actually G and when she was 4, we went to Glastonbury Carnival and she was dancing in the street to Lady Ga Ga's Bad Romance. People actually stopped and watched her rather than the floats and performers....guess you had to be there but it was very funny at the time.

Anyway, Pip asked me to make her a little bunny in the amugurami style. I love amugurami crochet. It's a technique that is very popular in Japan and is used a lot for making toys and hats. It's basically working in a round (no turning or single crochet at the end). The difficulty with is is that you have to be accurate with it. You have to mark the start of each round, with a safety pin or some kind of marker, and you have to count to make sure you have the right amount of stitches the whole time otherwise the shape you are truing to make will go all wonky and look, well, weird. I like working in the round, my very first project in France was an amugurami teddy. Pip finds it frustrating.

I came across an amugurami bunny pattern in Issue 2 of Simply Crochet magazine (thanks for the subscription Pip x). Perfect! Picked out some pink DK acrylic Yarn (Little Lady G is very girly but no doubt this bunny will get washed a few times and acrylic Yarn washes and dries well) and away I went, following the pattern. I used a 4mm hook not a 3mm as stated in the pattern as I wanted it to be a little bigger. Amugurami is quite a tight form of crochet so I wouldn't use any bigger a hook than a 4mm. When you stuff your finished toy you don't want the stitches to stretch and show the stuffing inside. So if you have a go at toy making just be aware that the tension has to be quite tight.

It was a bit fiddly this one...
The head and the body were fine to make. But the arms and legs! The were so small! At some point your doing a long time with only 9 stitches...that's barley big enough to get my finger in.
And the ears, loved the way they shaped themselves but again really narrow towards the end as I was working with only 8 stitches. Fiddly, very.

So here are the finished body parts....

It's been stuffed and sewn together now and it looks....PINK!!!! Need to tone it down a bit somehow.... Accessories, always accessories....a hat...oooo with flowers. Off I went and selected a lovely yellow yarn from my stash and quickly wizzed up a lovely little yellow hat. Done in the round again and this time as I was increasing I measured where the ears were and made slits for the ears to go through. This was done by chaining 5 stitched to make a gap and then just stitching into them on the next round, so easy and simple. I increased again to ward the end to give the hat a nice girly curly edge. Green running stitch was added when I actually stitched it onto the bunny to secure it in place. Made a couple of tiny green leaves and three tiny pink flowers, stitched in to place, job done. Sooo cute now. :-)

 The ears on this are huge so I hand stitched a little flower motif on one ear just to pretty it up a bit more and then embroidered a little heart on the sole of one of it feet.

Ta Dah! Easter bunny for Little Lady G from Aunty Tam xxx

Tx