One broken crochet hook, a couple of callouses and several pin pricks later, I have finally finished my Dogfish crochet project! I managed to make a total of 5 amigurumi toys in just under 3 weeks, complete with amigurumi hearts, hand-sewn faces and several felt spots. This is the biggest creative project I have ever undertaken, and is the culmination of months of work designing and redesigning to bring Dogfish to life. My box of recycled toys is now on its way to California; from there, this collection will be making its way to the Tucson Book Festival next weekend.
I made sure to document the process from start to finish so that I can share as much about this project as possible with you. I’ve been so busy crocheting that I haven’t had time to share anything on social media yet, so everything you see here is an exclusive first look! Keep reading to come behind the scenes with me and discover more about Dogfish, the character I have come to love so much.
When I think back to the start of this project, I’m really amazed at how far it has come. In the beginning, my amigurumi experience was fairly limited and I had always followed patterns written by somebody else. I never imagined I would one day be designing my own, let alone one with such complex shapes and details. The first few months of the design process involved a lot of trial and error. I have a bag filled with reject body parts, from heads and bodies to ears and flippers. I learnt just how important every stitch is in an amigurumi make; if you’re one or two stitches out, the shape of the whole project can be off.
This level of detail was especially important with Dogfish as I was working to a brief. Rita Reed, the author of Dogfish Saves the Ocean, was kind enough to send me a copy of the book so I could study the illustrations closely and make sure my crochet design was a match. The features that posed the biggest challenge were his chubby cheeks and his tail. I made countless versions of these parts, each pattern covered in more pencil scribbles than the last!
The final tail ended up consisting of 9 pieces, though I tried out versions with 6 and 8 pieces too. These smaller tails did look okay, but I wanted the tail to have a really full appearance and to look as though he is actually floating underwater. The tail is also one of the best features in the illustrations, and it was important to Rita that we capture this magic in the handmade version too. It took a while to perfect the shape of these pieces as I didn’t want them to be too flat; they needed to have a bit of a twist to them so they could fan out in different directions.
The tail was absolutely the fiddliest part and took probably the same amount of time to make as the rest of the head and body combined. The tail was actually how I managed to break one of my crochet hooks as it was a tight squeeze and the tip of the hook just snapped. I had only got the hook a couple of weeks earlier as well as it was an easy grip design so I thought it would be more comfortable to work with while crocheting so much. But, these things happen!
When I had all the crochet parts of this design completed, I moved on to assembling them. I stitched the flippers on and attached the hearts between them before moving on to pinning the ears and sewing them on. This was one of the scariest parts as I’m always nervous that I’ll attach the pieces in the wrong place, but they turned out well with a bit of focus and determination! After the crochet pieces were all assembled, it was time to move on to the recycled felt.
There were so many felt pieces to cut out and I’m very lucky that my partner, AJ, helped me with this. He spent hours cutting out 9 spots for the back of each toy in 3 different sizes, 8 pieces for each pair of eyes, and a nose. That was a whopping 90 pieces of felt! I stitched all of these on by hand using recycled Gütermann thread. I also used thread to create the facial features, which includes eyebrows, a smile and 8 whiskers. It was very time consuming as these details needed to be perfect. I stayed up very late several nights in a row to get them finished. I knew it was time to go to bed when my finger was bleeding from a pin prick. Tiredness is much more dangerous when you have sharp objects in your hands!
There were many other elements that went into this project as well as crocheting and sewing. I wanted to create a really great final product, so every detail was important. I got some recycled tissue paper to wrap the toys in, in a beautiful bright blue shade so that it was on brand for Dogfish. AJ also helped me design tags for each toy. These were printed on recycled paper and tied around the necks with jute string. We added a QR code to the tags and we’re currently putting together a webpage which is going to be filled with information about the recycled materials used and all sorts of behind the scenes photos for this project.
The most important thing to me during this project is the message that comes with Dogfish. I’m very passionate about living an eco friendly life wherever I can, and this fantastic book teaches children all about recycling and ocean conservation. It’s a really important lesson for current and future generations, and it’s been such a privilege to work on a project that aims to combat this issue. Textile technologies have a come long way over the last decade, and knowing that I have made something sustainable out of recycled plastic bottles that could’ve ended up in the ocean is a great feeling. For this reason, and many more, Dogfish has officially been my favourite crochet project ever and I look forward to making even more toys in the future.
If you ever need a gift for children, I’d really recommend taking a look at Dogfish Saves the Ocean. It’s fun, it’s colourful and it features a character you can really connect to. It’s also got great reviews and has become a favourite for children all over the world, teaching them about pollution and how everyone can help make a difference - click here to view this book on Amazon!
I hope you’ve enjoyed coming on this crochet journey with me and that it has helped inspire your own creative projects. Let me know what you think of Dogfish below!