PlanetJune by June Gilbank

It just occurred to me that I haven’t really shown you this hamster yet. You may have spotted him (in progress) in the demo video for my Detail Stuffing Tool:

I wanted to make a stitched project to use in the demo video, to show people that my tool has uses beyond stuffing amigurumi. Coincidentally, only a couple of days earlier, I’d saved the link to an adorable hamster pattern at Nuno Life, even though I had no plans at the time to make one. And then the perfect excuse came along: a cute hamster toy and the prop I needed for my video, all in one!

When I was clearing out my old bedroom at my parents’ house last year, I brought back all my old craft supplies from when I was a kid: rubber stamps, spirograph, cross stitch supplies, and a small stash of fur fabric and felt from my pre-teen toymaking endeavours. It seems strange that I’ve had these materials for around 20 years (let’s not think about how old that makes me sound!) – is that old enough to call them ‘vintage’ craft supplies? Ha!

I found that I had the perfect golden hamster-coloured fur fabric and pink felt in my rediscovered treasures. I’ve always hoarded supplies, to the extent that I used to not use anything in fear of making a mistake and ‘wasting’ it, so it’s especially satisfying to finally be able to use some of my precious, carefully guarded materials.

The pattern was easy to follow (just remember that, as with most Japanese sewing patterns, the pattern shapes don’t include a seam allowance, so cut outside the lines to add your seam allowance) and the minimal instruction was enough to piece it all together. I snipped two tiny eyeholes in the fur before stuffing so that I could use safety eyes with backs. The nose (made by the pattern seams) seemed too low to me, so I cut a tiny piece of felt and made a higher nose. Finally, I trimmed the fur around the eyes so they weren’t obscured.

It was a small and satisfying hand sewing project, and look how cute my hamster is – especially those little ears!

If you’d like to make one too, check out Runo’s free hamster pattern

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