The Very Hungry Caterpillar

Couple of months ago, I received an order from a music teacher for a caterpillar in Eric Carle's The Very Hungry Caterpillar book. I was very happy to receive such request because I am such an Eric Carle fan and his caterpillar is so adorable~ As I searched for the caterpillar pattern, I found out that there were so many The Very Hungry Caterpillar fans out there.  I finally settled for Britteny's Boutique's Hungry Caterpillar but made a little bit changes.  You can see her free pattern over here.

Britteny's caterpillar pattern is very simple, just a few balls for the body and head, the difficult part for me is to sew the body together and making them curve up correctly like Eric Carle's illustration.  It's challenging and the crafter perfectionist in me made me sew them a million more stitches so that the body stays in that way.  My poor fingers and thumbs were screaming "MURDER" because it's quite difficult to stick the needle in between 2 balls and try to pull the needle out from the other side.

Britteny uses felt for its eyes but I wanted to keep every thing crochet thus I crochet them instead.  Its just a simple sc around with increase sc to make them sort of longish shape.

I went to study Eric Carle's illustration of the caterpillar and decided to use 3 different shades of green yarns instead for its body.  I added more "hair" because me think it's a hairy caterpillar.

So far I have made 3 of this, each in different size and I never get too tired or bored making this.  The weaving in of the "hair" onto the body was a little therapeutic for me and I could do it while watching the tv.  I also find that by making the caterpillar with 2 strands of acrylic yarn gives it a sturdier and firm body, so it does not sort of droop down when you hold it at the tail end especially coz the head is slightly bigger and heavier.  Of course with the added strand means I just pushed the notch for sewing them together up 2 levels (can you hear my fingers and thumbs protesting???)

So what do you think of my caterpillar?  From the music teacher's feedback, the kids love the caterpillar and every one grabs for it when they are in class.  Aye!  Fighting over the caterpillar!  I think I better make another one so that there won't be any "wars" in class lol.

If you want to try making this caterpillar, the free pdf pattern by Britteny is above in this post.  If you rather I make this for you, simply drop me an email to place an order.