Thursday, July 07, 2011

Harry Potter Amigurumi Dolls

Harry, Dumbledore, Ron, Hagrid and Hermione

I made these five Harry Potter amigurumi dolls for a friend and her kids who all love the series. I had a lot of fun making them though they took much longer than I expected. Part of that may be because I was trying to made a duplicate set of dolls for myself at the same time because I knew if I didn't make them then, I never would. Unfortunately when we decided to move I had to rush to finish them and didn't get to make Dumbledore or Hagrid for myself.

Since I don't own the rights to Harry, I can't post a pattern. However, I will explain some of the basic techniques I used to create the dolls. I ended up doing a few new things for these dolls that I had never attempted before.


The bodies: I used a basic mushroom body shape, like the body I made for my Nativity dolls. Hagrid needed to be bigger so I added stitches to make him fatter and added extra rounds to make him taller. For Dumbledore, I didn't add extra stitches but I did add extra rounds.


The hair: This was my biggest challenge as I had never done hair on an amigurumi doll and it took a lot of experimentation. I think I will do a separate post with photos of the methods I used, but for now I will summarize by saying that for Hermione, Dumbledore and Hagrid's hair as well as the two beards, I crocheted a "wig cap" then threaded yarn through the spaces between stitches. I put glue on the underside of the cap so the hair wouldn't get pulled out. I pulled apart the strands of each yarn then used a wire brush to gently brush the yarn so it got fuzzy (except for Hermione, I didn't brush her hair out). I then attached the cap to the head. For Harry and Ron, I embroidered the yarn directly on to their heads.


The robes and Hagrid's vest: I started with my pattern for Joseph's robes and just added sleeves by picking up stitches around the arm holes and then crocheting in a spiral until they were long enough. Hagrid's vest was a short version of the robe without sleeves.

Scarves: I experimented with crocheting and knitting ties and scarves out of embroidery floss but when nothing turned out how I wanted, I switched to regular yarn and a homemade four-stitch knitting Nancy to make the i-cord scarves (this could also be done by using the double pointed knitting needle method, see this video).

Details: The faces and details were embroidered with embroidery floss. The eyes were safety eyes. Dumbledore's hat was a simple cone.

2 comments:

Erika Jean said...

Hagrid is the best! Awesome dolls! You can't even post the pattern if you are not profiting from it? I could understand if you were trying to seell them on etsy... but bummer!

Cat Carlisle said...

I'm sure JK Rowling isn't out trolling the internet for crochet pattern copyright infringement so I could probably get away with posting them but, as I understand it, if she or Warner Bros etc. did find them they would be within their rights to ask me to take them down. I don't want to mess with that possibility.

I've seen it happen before with Doctor Who. A knitter made a pattern for a character and shared it with her friends. It ended up on the internet and someone who made a doll using the pattern tried to sell the doll on eBay. The BBC got litigious and took it all the way back to the original pattern designer, even though (from what I can tell) she never tried to sell anything. :(

Sometimes sellers try to avoid getting caught by selling "wizard" patterns or dolls that are clearly Harry and crew. That just seems silly to me. If I want people to respect the copyright on my patterns, I need to do the same. :)

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