This cute little hedgie was the second of the home-made gifts my husband received from me for Christmas of 2015.
He wasn’t meant to be cross-eyed! Nor to have such a goofy little pucker of his lips, but like anything else, crafting projects sometimes just don’t go as planned!
I found this pattern originally on Pinterest, and it led here, to a site called CraftPassion. The problem was, that the piece was designed using yarns apparently only available in Japan! I would have to do some creative substituting!
Unfortunately for me, eyelash yarn is just too long and soft to really substitute for the fuzzy yarn used to simulate hedgehog quills. In fact, I couldn’t find anything quite like the yarn used in the original. I wound up using Red Heart Stellar yarn in the colour Meteorite. Since I was already using Red Heart Supersaver for the tan part of the body, it seemed like a natural choice. Because it wasn’t the same fuzzy, short eyelash texture that the quills are made from in the original, I substituted it for the plain brown yarn, and decided after much hemming and hawing, to forego the extra quill stitching, and just let the “fuzz” of the yarn have that job.
I think it turned out fairly well, regardless. 
At least the recipient seemed to think so!
Additionally, I cut the white felt for the eyes a little big, and didn’t realize it til I placed the brads. I had measured, cut, glued the felt in place, then put the brad in place and it looked totally different from what I expected! That’s just another lesson about short cuts – measure twice cut once? Or at least double check your work before you start gluing things in place!
Another slight change that I made was in using crafter’s chalk instead of make-up for the brown around the eyes and the pink on the cheeks and lips. I didn’t think I had the right pink in my make-up stash, and I was worried about makeup smearing or not setting correctly, or otherwise not working well on the yarn. So chalk it was. And that, at least, seemed to work really well!
Overall, this was a fun project to work on, but the lack of yarns called for really made me worry over it and stress out. I don’t know that I’ll choose another project where I can’t find the called-for items or a very, very close substitute.