Dollieh Sanctuary

I hope to one day have a site for this (and my art). For now, my amigurumi can be seen here and here; type "/chrono" at the end of the URLs to view these posts in chronological order. Please note that I sometimes go back and fiddle with and/or add onto finished projects, so the photos in their reveal/pattern posts may not reflect what they look like now (especially Eternal Sailor Mercury--she was the first and roughest of that sub-project).

To make a long story short: making my own plushes was something I wanted to for a very long time (like, when I was 6 or so) but couldn't. This changed around mid-2022 when I learned how to crochet; it was not an easy process in the slightest, but I kept at it and eventually made a Kirlia using Machbunny's pattern. (Specifically, I made one of my Pokemon X Kirlias, Helios, in a non-canon Shiny palette based off one of its two possible evolutions, Gallade; I later remade Helios along with his "brother", Selene.)

From there, I made some more Pokemon--including my first pass at an unused Poke from Gen I's development, Gorochu--before finally tackling my own characters, which was one of my goals for learning how to crochet in the first place. I also began (and, as of this writing, technically finished) a sub-project to make Sailor Moon's entire team in their Eternal forms, along with Sailor Astarte from the musicals and an OC of mine, Sailor Charon.

My patterns are written as Spartan as possible, because that's the only way my ADHD can parse it; I haven't really gone into assembly instructions anywhere, but I think that should be self-explanatory for the most part. Limbs are sewn to the body before stuffing and heads always go on last.


Some highlights among my OCs:

* Johnnie Blackburn's upgrades, along with some adjustments I made to Angelus, Dante, and Vince.

* Josiah, the first plush of mine with a functioning button (albeit not visible in these pics; it's under his cloak dec).

* Seine, a dragon and my largest amigurumi to date. That "mirage" yarn isn't exactly accurate to her plumage, but.

* The "core seven" of Deus Vocatus all sitting together. (This was pre-adjustment for many of them, but I still like this shot.)

* Archangel Michael, post-adjustment. (Unfortunately, this photo was taken in between my Canon breaking and my receiving of Mom's old SLR.) It took me a while to figure out why I wasn't completely satisfied with him the first time.


And from my fanworks:

* Gorochu V2. The original was vital to my understanding of how to write my own patterns, but he was based on another crocheter's Raichu pattern and (being my third ever) was rougher than five miles of bad road; this Gorochu has a new design and (one row of head aside) is my own pattern.

* Eternal Sailor Moon. (As noted: she was supposed to be the capstone of that sub-project, but that honour wound up going to Chibi Moon.)

Oh my goodness, they're all so cute! Anyone who can figure out how to crochet plushies always has my respect. It all seems so complicated to me.

Makes me jealously want to post more pictures of mine, but I just don't have the energy.

Kattriella wrote:Oh my goodness, they're all so cute! Anyone who can figure out how to crochet plushies always has my respect. It all seems so complicated to me.

Thanks! ^^

It is a bit complicated, yeah, though mostly because there's a lot of multiplying and dividing going on with increases/decreases. I mostly work in multiples of 6; for example, working up to 54 stitches in a piece (most of a head and the widest part of most characters' chests) would be "sc X, increase 1", where X goes up by one each row, times seven rows.

(I'm also pretty sure I have dyscalculia, so maybe that explanation didn't make sense.)

Could just be me, but it also doesn't help that a lot of patterns are written in a very roundabout manner, i.e. "1 sc in each sc around" instead of "sc X".

Tam I am wrote:Makes me jealously want to post more pictures of mine, but I just don't have the energy.

Hey, whenever you do have the energy is fine.

I'll try to stay on top of cross-posting, starting with Yumeji Gekkohara.

Not mentioned in the original post: the colour changing on her torso didn't go down far enough and my attempts to embroider over it failed miserably, so I just tried to make it look like another garment. Maybe one of these days, I'll draw Yumeji with her jacket open and a light vest underneath so that it won't look so much like I screwed up. :U

Two new, one fixed.

* Teresa, Lady of Lightning. She won the honor of being the first DO girl to be made on dint of her head existing first.

* Eternal Sailor Star Fighter, completed last night. As mentioned, this is a non-canon design, and actually the second pass at such; I think the red looks a lot better than what it was originally going to be (white).

* Pavo got an entirely new head.

To explain: Pavo was project no. 15. While working on his head, I had an ADHD brain fart and forgot how to count rows, resulting in his face being "drawn" one round too low. My attempt at course-correcting just left him with a downward slope for a face, to say nothing of his ears being spaced just a little too far from his eyes, which messed with his hair cap (I usually embroider fill-in details if a character doesn't have prominent sideburns that can be crocheted, which Pavo doesn't). All because I had struggled with getting his eye shape right for too long to want to undo the embroidery.

Cut to four days ago. I was working on Star Fighter's hair cap, which uses the same navy blue as Pavo's hair, and thought, "as long as I've got this particular yarn out..." So once I was done with Fighter for the day, I grabbed the latte yarn (Pavo's skin tone) and started on Head no. 2.

I ended up making a hew hair cap and ears for him, too, as I wasn't 100% confident I could transfer his old ones cleanly. By the time I removed his bangs (the only things I did transfer), there was no going back. Luckily, I was able to perform the swap with minimal complications.

Pavo looks so much better now--I can see just how much those cascading failures on the first one threw everything off, like his bangs not sitting right. And it's easier to appreciate the things I did get right/made good calls on (ex. using peacock for his coat instead of medium blue) when I'm not kicking myself every time I glance in his direction.


Keziah's most likely up next, followed by Star Healer.

Another "two new + adjustments to existing projects":

* Keziah, Lady of Earth. The variegated yarn I chose for her really paid off, I think.

* Eternal Sailor Star Healer--or maybe "Sprite edition" Healer.

* A whole lotta plush maintenance for most of DV's core seven, followed by more of that. In short, three of them needed a re-stuff and I wanted to get Jess more on-model (I'd made her before figuring out that I could layer hair in the back).