FO: Sack Boy Dolls

What's another quick project that I finished last year? Little Big Planet Sackboys for my boys!

I started first with the brown sackboy, which has the open mouth and tongue details similar to the cover of the game. I'll walk you through the process, but you can find my complete project notes here.

I started knitting the doll at the base of the neck. Once I was at the level of the eyes, it was time to start the mouth. I basically treated the mouth area like an afterthought heel. I evenly put the mouth stitches on the circular needle before cutting the stitches between. I knit the mouth in black, and then decreased the sides of the mouth exactly like the toe section of a top-down sock. To finish, I grafted the leftover stitches together. (I added the KAM snap buttons before deceasing for the head after knitting the head for a few more rows.)

After the sockboy's body was knit and connected, I knit the legs and arms, attaching the 20 mm doll joint screws through the middle of a stitch before decreasing and binding off the limbs. They were snapped into place before stuffing the body.

The neck section proved difficult to support properly against the weight of the brown sackboy head. I ended up adding a pen to serve as the spine bone. Then, I stuffed the sackboy as much as I could without him looking like it was time to start a weight watcher's diet.

 

I choose a small inexpensive zipper and cut it to size and then hand-sewed it to the open chest cavity. Even a sackboys needs a heart, so I cut a small one out to place inside his chest! It's not practical to have the zipper freely zip up and down with no barrier between it and stuffing, so I sewed underneath the zipper with some thread so it was no longer functional.

The finishing touches were adding faux sewing accents and hot-gluing a tongue inside the mouth. I attempted to sew the black mouth parts into the stuffing to give the open mouth less of a bloated look, but was a bit unsuccessful. Overall, I was unhappy with the water the face came out, which is why the next one I made had a closed mouth.

Project Notes

Pattern: Sackboy by Alan Dart, heavily modified

My Complete Brown Sackboy Notes

 

Brown Sackboy Materials:

Needles: US 6 - 4.0 mm

Yarn: Patons North America Classic Wool Worsted

1 skein = 210.0 yardsin in the color Brown for the body

A handful of yards of Yarn Bee Must Be Merino in the Colorway 7 Black

20 mm Doll joints, stuffing, zipper, red felt for tongue/heart & size 20 KAM snap buttons

 

Tan Sackboy Materials:

Needles: US 4 - 3.5 mm 

Yarn: Can't find the label. It was sport weight yarn that was really smooth from Hobby Lobby. I wrote down "Symphony Yarn," but can't seem to find that online.

20 mm Doll joints, stuffing, zipper, red felt for heart & Size 20 KAM snap buttons

I'm not crazy about how the mouth panned out, so sackboy #2 was a big improvement, in my opinion:

Even he has a heart!