An Out-of-My-Depth Project

Have you seen the movie Coraline? It’s a stop-motion animation by Henry Selick based on a story by Neil Gaiman. It involves a young girl named Coraline (not Caroline), a locked door, a black cat that can and can’t talk, and the “other” mother. I love stop-motion animation. The amount of work that goes into it, the detail, is just incredible. In this movie all the knitted items that Coraline wears were actually hand knitted by a microknitter named Althea Crome. You can learn more about her and see her work at www.bugknits.com. I attempted to microknit with pins once. It did not end well.

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I saw Coraline with my sister and my niece when it first came out. Unfortunately, it was a little scary for my niece and for some of the other children in the audience - a few little ones left the cinema in tears. I, on the other hand, loved it. The movie features a sinister, button-eyed doll (pictured to the right). I came out of the cinema needing to make that doll.

It took me weeks. I didn’t know how to sew and I had never made a doll before or designed my own pattern. I was clueless – but sometimes that’s the best way to be with these kind of things. They’re the type of projects you learn the most from, the type of projects where you believe anything is possible because you don't know your limits. Anyway, here she is …

She’s far from perfect. She needs a bit of a neck lift. Her make-up is a bit messy. Her buttons eyes are a bit loose. But all that doesn’t matter. She’s one of my out-of-my-depth projects and I love her.

Pattern heads-up: The next pattern I'll be posting will be Walter the Blue Fish. He's Marilyn's companion. I want to crochet something a little special to go with him so expect him to be up in 1-2 weeks.

 Filmography link and data courtesy of The Internet Movie Database.