...since Little Sissie's unicorn and the Halloween headbands are finished...it's time to get started on Big Sissie's Kitty Cat...and she had quite the list of 'specifications':
...an orange cat...
...with stripes...
...and white paws...which she calls boots...
...and white under the belly and chin...
...and a white face...
...and whiskers
...and perhaps most oddly...it needs to have teeth...
.
..this is the pattern I'll be using...and I know it's a Siamese kitten and looks nothing like the requested kitty...but remember "Grandmommy can make ANYTHING"...so I'm really only using the pattern for the stitch counts and improvising all of the colour changes required for this very specific Tabby Cat...
...I'll be appliqué-ing a muzzle and a blaze between the eyes...so I'm just starting with the orange base...
...then I crocheted a cream coloured muzzle...and another appliqué circle to go underneath to make the mouth/chin area...
...popped those two pieces together...
...crocheted a little pink nose...just a magic cirle with 3 sc into it...
...stitched a couple of nostrils on top of the pink nose...
...and that little separator line that goes between the nose and the mouth...
...stuffed the muzzle with fluff...
...and stitched it together...
...then stitched that onto the orange base...
...and started crocheting the rounds...adding what I'm calling vertical stripes here in the round...I've seen patterns where the stripes are horizontal or take an entire row of the darker colour...but I want these stripes to radiate out from the muzzle not around it...
...switching to 'craft mode' when it was time to add the cat's eyes...
...this part may not make sense but I'll try to explain it...I melted some glue sticks flat between parchment paper with the iron to make a pretty flexible sort of plastic disk...and painted it black...becuase I'm trying to make that black sort of eyeliner that cats have around their eyes...
...then I sketched the sort of shape I wanted...with a little 'tear' area the little pointed outer area...these have actual names if you're nerdy enough to care...like me...haha...
• Medial Canthus: This is the medical term for the inner corner of the eye where the upper and lower eyelids meet near the nose.
• Lacrimal Caruncle: The small, pink, fleshy bump located directly in the inner corner. This is what people most commonly point to as the "tear duct" area, though it actually contains sebaceous and sweat glands.
• Lateral Canthus: This is the medical term for the outer corner of the eye where the upper and lower eyelids meet, heading toward your temple.
...there ya go...
...traced those and cut them out...
...and then the cat has to have actual sharp pointy teeth...you know just the two tips of the canines or we used to call them fangs that are sometimes visible peeking out under the muzzle even when their mouth is closed...
...and I thought about making individual teeth...but ended up making this U shaped two teeth thingy...because I thought it would be easier to hold in place from behind...
...pulled the two teeth through to the front so that just the tips are showing...
...and this is the U from behind...
...so I stitched that in place really well so that the teeth can't be pulled out...
...so this is pretty much the finished face part of the kitten's head...I did go ahead and integrate the white part of the blaze between the eyes but I'll add an
appliquéed blaze on top for some depth...I just didn't want the orange to show through on the blaze...
...more to come...
...what's in your workbasket this week?...
~Have a lovely day!
