star wars mini guinea hams

Last week I showed off the little hamster that I made using the Gleeful Guinea Pig project from my book Stitch Love. As I was writing the post, the name "mini guinea ham" came to mind, and I think it's gonna stick. For me at least. Especially as I've found that you can take this design and modify it to make other characters.

Like characters from Star Wars.

Now you may have never thought about taking a beloved movie character and transforming it into a hamster, but apparently that's just where my head goes. If Disney can do it with Tsum Tsum, so can I.

The basics are that you take the Gleeful Guinea Pig templates in Stitch Love and shrink them down 50%. Then, you customize a little!



Wicket the Ewok is pretty close to the original style. I used wool blend felt for the middle section so I could get a color I liked, but I was really happy with how the felt worked on here. Since there's no stretch, I made the section a little longer just in case I needed the length.

His ears are also a little smaller, and the nose is rounded. I left off the mouth on all of these.

Oh, and I found that a regular hole punch make great little eyes!



For Chewbacca, I wanted his fur to stick out a little more than the fur on the standard mini guinea ham. Instead of whip stitch I used running stitch so that the zig zag fur remained free. I also made a little bandoleer that you'll see below.




For Yoda, a green face and big ears were all that I needed to convey who this was, right? I just free-handed the ear shape.

The robe (which I realized too late that I did have a better color I could have used) is cut with a wavy edge instead of the zig zag of the pattern. I also made it a little wider so I could fold it back like you see. At the front end, I used the running stitch method about 1/2 from the edge, then folded it. At the back end, it's whip stitch.

Princess Leia has the same folded back front, and Han Solo is all whip stitch, but with that wavy edge. They also got some free-hand cut hair.

For all of these, I looked for ways to show the essence of the character in the simplest way possible. Sometimes my family would tell me that I was missing some detail, or that a color wasn't quite right. But that wasn't the point. I wanted these to have just enough of that character so you could tell. Han Solo is the hardest, but when he's hangin' with Chewie, it's all good.

Honestly, I think the only reason I chose some of these characters was so that I could do this:





What can I say? It's the simple things in life that bring me joy!

These are so easy to customize like this. I hope you give it a go and make a few for Star Wars Day next week. They come together quickly enough that you won't even have to go into hyperdrive!