It’s BABY time!

For those of you who don’t know yet, I’m a new mom…so it’s just fitting that I tried to make some toys for my baby. These baby rattles was so much fun and I managed to complete them all in just a weekend.

I’ve bought wooden curtain rings for the rattle ring, but they were quite rough around the edges to say the least. First I tried to use a very fine sanding paper (P240) to sand it smooth, but it took so long. So I used a Dremmel with a sanding disc instead and then finished it off with the sanding paper.

The majority of these patterns follow the magic ring method where you need to sew in one continuous round, but I hate this method, because whenever I crochet, I like to watch TV while doing so and I always lose count. I also don’t like to use stitch markers, because it takes time to move them along. So to overcome this obstacle, I use chain stitches in the beginning of each round, instead of sewing in one continuous round. It helps me to see each round clearly and I don’t have to keep count.

My top three benefits of using chain stitches:

1. Clearly marks the beginning of a row/round so you can stop counting stitches.
2. Don’t have to use stitch markers and move them along to keep count.
3. Creates an invisible seam and closes any openings. In these two images below you can see that the seam with chain stitches are hidden in the back and the front is closed neatly.

The pattern I’ve used for inspiration was a pattern created originally by Claudia Stolf for Circulo Yarns. Her Tiger pattern is written for 4ply yarn using a 3mm crochet hook, but I’ve rewritten all of the patterns to use DK yarn and a 4mm hook. The patterns for the other animal characters I’ve designed, I used different pictures as references.

Watch out for our next blog post where I’ll share one of the patterns.

Thanks for reading!

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