I knew going in this was going to be a massive project but what can you do when Nephew is nuts about Thomas and you knit him presents?

This was a major pain in the arse. A bit fiddly to knit up because there were so many pieces but not especially difficult but with over 100 pieces to put together it’s the making up that kills you.

As usual Ruth knit the pieces and passed the project on to me. I looked a other people’s versions and tried to work out what went best. I found that just stuffing (polyfil) wasn’t going to work so we dug up some old foam from a kneeling block to use for some stability.

I love the way Alan Dart projects look when they are done but they always have such terrible making up instructions. The sort that seem to go Step 1->Step 2->Do some magic->Step 4.

I gave up on the instructions and just tried to work from the photos. They really need detailed photos or drawings of all the pieces, what they are called and where they go.

If I just had the photos from the pattern I think I’d still be stuck trying to put the damn thing together but thankfully other lovely people have done this before me and put up photos from other angles.

Seriously, if you’re going to name a piece in the making up instructions then make sure you named it that in the knitting instructions too.

Anyway this did come together in the end and I am really pleased with it. Nephew knew it was Thomas right away and seemed very happy with it.
I really hope he was given how long I worked on it.

I needle felted a lot of the details on (like his face) because I tried the embroidery but I couldn’t get it as accurate as I wanted.

I had to do a lot of shaping once it was stuffed. I used a felting needle for some of it and at some points you can see where I sewed from one side of him to the other with some yarn and tacked things in. Not as neat as I wanted but I was on a tight deadline so I didn’t have time to shape foam properly and stuff. If I’d had new foam I think I could have made him a bit neater.

Also sorry for the lack of progress pictures, I didn’t end up with time to show them and my phone camera doesn’t have a flash and I sit in a dark little corner with a lamp but it doesn’t work well for photos.