This little Piggy

Okay now I have done several animals with balls starting as bodies mainly my bunnies and mouse that were mentioned in the post on redoing. This little guy was one of the first ideas I had as I thought he'd be quite easy.

A piglet as it was all one colour and with simple shapes. Snout lets and ears all being modifications on shapes I had used before.

The first thing i did was make the body. I put the safety eyes in when i had it half done. Normally I wait as long as I can to add them so i'm sure where I want them and I know I don't have to redo any of my work. If I was attaching the head to a separate body like on my coke bear I'd attach all the other facial features first and then the eyes stuffing and unstuffing it as I go to make sure you have the shape you want. For a sealed body like this you want to add the eyes while you'r working it but keep in mind that when you put the eyes on they are not going anywhere.

As you can see at this point he doesn't really look like much of anything. you could make a shape like this as a head for a larger doll it's really a matter of what you add to it as this point.

The snout was easy to make. Start with a magic ring. Then you do a round with 2 sc in each stitch. Then two rounds where you have one sc in each stitch. This is how you start off any shape that you want to be tube shaped. You can make them rounder or flatter on the end depending on how you stuff them. For anyone learning how to make amigurumi needs to learn the magic ring or some variation of it. it gives the best finish and keeps you from having a hole at the start from you slip knot.

The legs come next and not surprisingly they are just like the snout only you add more rounds of sc in each st to make them longer. it's good to keep in mind with any piece that you plan to attach to the body to keep a long tail on it after you tie it off. that will give you the yarn you need to attach it.

Remember these from the last post. yes they are the pigs ears and though simple shapes they do have a trick to making them but it makes them useful to make all kinds of ears.

First you make a magic ring again but you'r not going to continue to work in the round after you're done. No you're going to chain one and turn your work. then you put 2 HDC 2 DC and then 2 HDC and tie off. or if you want a similar shape but smaller you do 2 sc, 2 HDC and then 2 sc. The shorter stiches make up the sides of the ear and the taller ones the top.

These pictures show the ears from different views to give a clearer idea of how they are put together.

Last but not least we have the tail.

This was the easiest part. I just made an idiot cord and trimmed it to be a little over an inch and then curled it around itself. I tired different things to make it stay curly such as putting a wire in it but found that it did pretty good on it's as long as the cord was short to start with.

So now my piglet  was done but there's always room to add more. after all a piglet is cute but....

a dapper piglet is ready for a night on the town.