THE STRIPES

I followed the pattern as written, until I finished the body piece. I didn’t like how the spiral crochet in the round made the stripes look (even with jogless strips).

So for the legs and arms I switched to joining each round with a slip stitch, ch1, then continuing with the sc.

Resources that helped me:
Joined vs Spiral rounds
Jogless Stripes

THE FACE

The Muzzle
I really didn’t like how the muzzle part was done. I’m not sure if switching to joined rounds instead of the spirals would have helped, but having the stitches be lopsided made it hard to line up the face elements. It looks okay all put together, but if I were to make this again, I’d find a different way to crochet the muzzle.

I didn’t want to use felt, so I crocheted the eyes, notes and vertical head strips. All these pieces were done with a 3.5mm hook:

The Nose
For the nose, I copied madejo’s notes for their Hobbes

The Vertical Strips
For the vertical stripes, I used madejo’s notes again. I had to practice the foundation chains as this was a first for me. It was worth the time!

My gauge was different, so I made them longer: 6 fsc, 4fhdc, 3fdc.

The Eyes
For the eyes, I followed ImmaculateStitch’s instructions here

ASSEMBLY

This was a big learning curve for me. I wanted Hobbes to be sturdy as I knew he was going to get tossed around a lot.

I used the following videos to help:
Attaching the limbs and head
Attaching limbs