Working on Lovely Little Letter Patterns

I have been working hard on my Lovely Little Letter patterns lately. In the past several days I have been creating the patterns for a capital J, capital I, capital L, lowercase t, and lowercase o. Hopefully I will have the patterns available soon; I have a few great testers working on some patterns for me right now.

Most of these patterns are fairly simple to follow, but I want to have a tester make sure I did not put any incorrect numbers while typing them up.

For the letters like the lowercase o, I needed to take photos of each step to make sure that my pattern was very clear.

I added my capital I as a free download on Ravelry for those who want to try out a Lovely Little Letter without a commitment of money. Once you see the general idea and size, then you can check out more letters. If there is a letter I have not gotten to yet and you are interested in being a tester, please let me know.

Here is the download link for the capital I:
download now
Be sure to check out my pattern page to see which letter patterns and other patterns are available now.

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Creating Some Lovely Little Letters

I have been interested in making some stuffed crocheted letters that looked more like letters that children easily recognize for a while. I had done some research on cross stitch programs, hoping that one might help me in the design process. Since I have a computer that uses Linux instead of Windows I had to do a little extra searching for a program, but have been pleased so far that it does what I need it to do.

Since I have been making large letter pillows, I decided that these letters should be a bit smaller so that it would not be a ridiculous amount of work or money to create an entire name. The upper case letters are ranging close to 9 inches high, while the lower case are around 7 if they do not have stems. I think they are large enough to be played with by a young child, although I would not necessarily hand one to a kid who tries to stick everything in his mouth without some supervision.

I decided to just start at a and work my way through the alphabet, although is not working out exactly that way since a lower case b can also be a p or a d, depending upon its orientation. Once I get these created, I would also like to make the patterns available for those who crochet. I am now lining up some people to test the patterns for me once I manage to get them into a nice and clean pdf format. I think the patterns themselves could be used for the stuffed creations as well as just making one side to use as an applique.

Next up for me is a capital D. I am looking forward to just about every letter, but I know I will have to do some experimenting to get lower case i and j to look the way I want them to look. Anyone have any suggestions for those?

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ABCDEFG….How many letter pillows do you see?

I have two more letter pillows to make. And, wouldn’t you know it, one of them is an M. I think I am up to five letter M pillows so far. I have almost memorized the pattern for it. I get to add another photo to my alphabet soon, though. The other letter is a G in light blue.



One of the many ideas I have rolling around in my head is a set of lower case letters. I have been researching cross stitch programs in hopes that I might use one of them to help me design a set of lower case letters. Of course, I keep wondering how I might work out lower case i and j, with their pesky dots. If the cross stitch program does not work out, I guess there is always graph paper. Hopefully I can get to work on this idea next month when my girls go to school and I can have a semi-normal routine again.

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Whose Hands Are These?

I have finally returned to my puppets and worked on making some arms with hands the other evening. Any ideas whose hands these will be? If you have been paying attention, you can probably guess. Here is a hint: think fairy tales….

I just finished this and mailed it off for a four year old this week. Fortunately, with my Ott-Lite, making this with the navy blue yarn was not as difficult as I thought it was going to be. The last navy blue letter I made had to be put together during the day because I just could not see what I was doing.

ASL Sign for the Post: To sign the letter J, you close your dominant hand, keeping your pinkie finger out. Then make the J shape in the air with your pinkie finger.

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This post brought to you by the letter M

I just finished making this pillow for my youngest daughter. She loves purple and picked out the yarn with me at the craft store. She brought it with her to bed tonight and as we were saying our good nights, she turned it upside down and told me, “This is what a W looks like.” Pretty good for a three year old.

I also made a letter L for my oldest daughter, but she has not let me have it to take a photo yet; she currently has it wearing a pink leg warmer as a sweater. Hers is made from yarn that changes colors and was my first attempt at following the letter patterns I found. If I have a reason to do “L” again, I think I will make some changes to it because either my gauge is off (pattern did not mention gauge), or some of the pattern has some problems.

A few children’s books come to mind that start with M. My daughter loves reading Jan Brett books, which have incredible illustrations. The Mitten is very popular with preschool and kindergarten teachers, so if you have not read it with your child, I am sure a teacher will. The author has an awesome website, with many, many fun activities.

One we have read aloud with my six year old is Morning Girl by Michael Dorris. This story has short chapters, so it is good for a child just learning to listen to books that take more than one sitting to read. It goes back and forth between two characters as well, which is another, more advanced way of storytelling that could be introduced with this book.

I read The Midwife’s Apprentice by Karen Cushman to my sixth grade students when I taught about the Middle Ages. I look forward to sharing it with my daughters when they get a bit older. Because of the unfamiliar setting, there would just be too much explaining to do with each page for my daughters to get much out of it yet.

ASL sign for the post: The letter M is made by putting your thumb under your index, middle, and ring finger, and over your pinkie. You do not need to fold your index, middle, and ring fingers all the way down. This would take too long when fingerspelling. (I tried to copy the free image from wikipedia, but it kept turning out black, so you can click on the link above (letter M) to see it.)

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