Hello Kitty 12 inch afghan granny square

I made this Hello Kitty square recently for a Ravelry friend who was unwell …

This square is my own interpretation. I have improvised based on information found on the web, and have linked to some archived web pages that were very hard to find. This is not a standard Hello Kitty pattern square, this is a 12 inch square. (much much bigger).

Below you will find links to the original Hello Kitty square, as well as a written version of the face.    You could choose to make these as is, in a thicker yarn for increased size, and then just add some extra rows if you need them, to reach your square size.  Or you could do what I did, experiment a little . . .

I increased the face size, plus added a colour border with a thread of gold, I therefore had to play with stitch lengths around the face (sc, hdc, dc, dtc) to get the square to form around the face properly – this needs to be experimented with because it depends on how big you make your face, and what size yarn you use. After that I added colour and sparkles for two rows, and kept increasing the square size until I got to the size required. For the eyes and nose I crocheted little circles or simply used buttons. I hope this helps you to develop your own Hello Kitty interpretation.

I took inspiration from several links:

backpack pattern (web archives), its the only “written” pattern I could find for it – it helps you to roughly understand that if you start with a small chain, SC on each side of it, and keep going around and around (adding more stitches on the ends) you end up with a short oval. To this you simply add ears, decreasing at the end of each row of the ears until you come to a point. Then join to attach the other ear, leaving just a small space between the ears. Once you understand this concept, you can make the face any size you want without the need to adhere to any pattern, then add borders if you need it even larger. Adding borders smooths out the outline, and adding a colour border as the final border can make the face stand out well. For the ribbon, crochet a long rectangle and tie some yarn in the centre.  The eyes and nose can be little crochet circles or buttons.

You can use this concept to make a kitty face for anything at all. See the bottom of this post for a picture of a face I made to sew on a simple felt bag. I used some cushion stuffing in between the felt and the crochet – just crochet some simple straps to match.

diagram, (arrow down to the bottom of that web page) – this helped a little, but because the face is bigger, experimentation with various stitch lengths around the face to go from round to square is needed.

After I did all this, I discovered a Hello Kitty group on Ravelry.com !! There are dozens of links and ideas there.

My next goal is to make this pattern: Hello Kitty hat and scarf by Kotka.  I think her interpretation is wonderful !