Never have I worked on a pattern for so long, and now I can finally show you Woolfie, my refreshing new crochet wolf pattern!
Refreshing? Well, yes, I learned a few new techniques to make this wolf amigurumi. More about that later.
For quite a while I have wanted to make a fox that can sit but that has flexible limbs. Somehow it didn’t work out no matter what I tried, so at some point I gave up. But then came the news that a wolf had been seen in my country, and then another one and even more. Wolves have been extinct for a long time in my country, but these sightings meant that wolves were interested in living here. And then a female wolf settled in a rural part of the Netherlands and successfully raised three pups. Wolves have now officially returned! I think this is fabulous, and I hope it will work out. Of course I had to make a new wolf pattern now. I stepped back into the ‘drawing room’ and took another look at my fox sketches. It became clear that if I wanted to make a fabulous wolf, I would need to improve the technique I had tried to use for that fox. So I practised, making many sketches to visualise how everything should look. And then I started crocheting.
First I made the head. I figured that if I made a cute face, it would be difficult to quit and I would have to finish the rest. And it worked! After I made the head, I started trying out different body shapes. One thing was certain: the body and front paws needed to be seamless. Since I already had a long time to think about it after I stopped working on that fox, I soon found the right shape and size. Then the body needed colouring. I looked at many wolf pictures and decided that my wolf needed to have a light-coloured chest with a grey back. But when I finished the body like that, the front looked like a straight flat piece, very shapeless and not at all what I had in mind. I had to use my imagination to think of a solution that still looked realistic but added much more character. I grabbed my main sketch and started drawing again. After a few tries I found something I liked and worked it out in crochet, and it looked perfect.
But then I had a setback. When I started the body, I thought, ‘I’ll figure out the back paws later’. That wasn’t very smart of me. When I pinned the basic back paws I had made to the body, it looked all wrong. Now I had a complex-looking, seamless body with simple, silly-looking back paws. That weekend I had no idea how I was going to shape them. And then I looked at Boeloe the Koala and got an idea: what if I slimmed down the body and create paws like Boeloe’s, with a hip and a leg part? Would that create the flexible look I desired? Some quick math revealed that I only had to slim down the lower bit of the body to compensate for the bulk the hips would add. Because I didn’t want to end up regretting that I hadn’t made a seamless tail, I also worked out how to create a hole for that.
After all the effort and a pile of failed attempts, Woolfie now is sitting in front of me and he is so gorgeous! He looks more like an excited wolf pup than an adult wolf, but who cares about that? This is a win-win situation: I made a super-realistic new wolf pattern AND I learned a lot of new crochet skills. And the good thing for you is, the way these techniques are worked into the pattern doesn’t make it much more difficult to make, because you can just follow the instructions. I have figured out for you how to do these cool things the easy way!
Here are some more pictures of sweet Woolfie, and below them you can find all the info you need about this wolf amigurumi pattern.
Info about & links to buy the pattern
This realistic crochet wolf is made with Istex Lett Lopi, a 100% wool with a lot of fuzziness. He is 6 inch / 15 cm sitting when made with this yarn. This isn’t a very difficult animal to crochet, even the seamless bits are quite easy to attach if you follow the instructions.
The pattern contains a clear and colour-coded description of how to crochet and assemble this animal, with extra illustrations and example pictures at the bottom to help you get everything right. In the pattern you can also find what materials you need, the yarn colour numbers, in short, everything you need to know to make your own realistic wolf amigurumi. All the additional information you need to know about this pattern you can find in the shop listings. You can buy this pattern in my shop at Ravelry, Etsy or order it here.
This pattern has a one dollar release discount till Thursday the 16th of April!
When I started this pattern, I was worried that crafters wouldn’t really fancy making a cranky-faced plushy, but my worries receded when I posted a first teaser picture and so many of you fell in love with the face right from the start! Now I knew I had to make sure I would meet your expectations and design a fabulous cranky and cute owl amigurumi.
How I designed the face is a funny story. I started out with the barn owl face as a basis, but that didn’t work out for a little owl or a pigmy owl face. So I fumbled around trying different things. At some point, when I was playing with a basic round shape, I discovered that if I folded the top down, I got the perfect owl’s frown, how delightfully simple! Just the folded circle wouldn’t do, it needed some colouring and a beak. So I worked ahead and that’s how this striking face came to be.
Many of you asked about these striking eyes. The eyes I used for this crochet owl pattern are animal safety eyes with a dark pupil and transparent backs. I painted the backs yellow with acrylic paint and added a little felt patch to create the dark line around the eyes, voila, easy peasy.
The body is pretty basic by itself, but when I started to add the spots things became somewhat challenging to crochet. And as I wrote the pattern down, my head started to spin at some point. I’m sorry about all the colour changes, even I didn’t enjoy them! But they really are worth the effort because they make the most fabulous textured owl’s body. And if you keep your yarns separated, like one on the left and one on the right, and you keep grabbing them from the same direction, they will not tangle. You need to get into that ‘rhythm’ for the wings as well.
To sum things up, this crochet owl has a seamless body and head made from the bottom up. Right before you close the head, you attach the face with eyes to the head. Not much sewing needs to be done here because the eyes secure the face quite well already. The feet, tail and wings need to be sewn to the body and that’s it.
Here are some more pictures of this little / pigmy owl amigurumi, and below them you can find all the info you need about the pattern.
sonspopkes.com 