Mad Hatter Crochet Challenge – Cheshire Cat

One of the blogs I follow, The Crochet Crowd, held a Mad Hatter crochet challenge.  The goal of the challenge was to crochet a Mad Hatter hat following a pattern by Red Heart.  The crocheter could use any colors and decorate the hat using an Alice in Wonderland theme however he or she wished.  I made two hats.

I had fun being a little more artistic than usual with these hats.  The first hat was Cheshire Cat themed.  I loved the colors from the Tim Burton movie, so I based the cat off of that Cheshire Cat.  Typically with crochet the main body of a piece is made in a solid color or stripes.  Other pieces are made seperately and sewn on.  For this hat, I imagined the cat appearing out of the side of the hat so I crocheted the color changes into the hat using a similar technique to that used for stranded colorwork in knitting.  His eyes, nose and smile are clear, he then fades into the hat with only three stripes showing.  His tail became the ribbon that goes around the hat.  I added Red Heart Foxy yarn to his tail to make it furry.  Since the contest was sponsored by Red Heart, I bought all Red Heart yarn (and used a little stash yarn) for the final product.  I love how he turned out!  I had the hardest time not posting pictures of him until after the mail-in deadline for the contest (which was yesterday.)