Knitted Monster Fridge Magnet

The idea for this little project actually came when I received a new catalogue from a food delivery service. Their catalogue is quite big and on its back there is a glued on magnet so that you can just put it on your fridge. I didn't like the idea to just throw the magnet away, so I started asking myself what I could do with it ... and - not really surprising - I liked the idea of doing something in knitting :) I furthermore decided to only use materials that I had already at home, i.e. to make this a real recycling project.

This work by Knitting and so on is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.




Materials

• magnets (I used one rescued from a delivery catalogue) 
• knitting needles and scrap yarn to knit the surface - if you don't like knitting you can also use a small piece of fabric
• embroidery thread or other yarn to stitch the face
• embroidery needle
• 1 to 3 button(s) for the eye(s)
• a piece of cardboard stock (this can be old packaging - it will not be visible)
• a piece of scrap paper
• glue (I used normal craft glue and superglue) 

Instructions

• Knit a small square (about 7cm x 7cm) with any yarn of your choice - I knitted it in plain stockinette stitch. The edges will roll in, but that won't matter because the edges will be hidden at the back of the monster. Don't weave in the ends - rather you can use them to draw the edges tight later. 
• On a piece of paper doodle a few monsters to scale and decide upon a design (photo 1).
• Copy that design on a piece of cardboard stock and cut out both the cardboard and the paper (photo 2).
• With your embroidery needle stitch through the paper to mark where the facial features should be (photo 3). Then glue paper to the WS of your knitted square (photo 4).

• Stitch the face on with embroidery thread and sew on the button(s). If you're design changes a bit while you're stitching - that's fine, too (photo 5).
• Then glue the cardboard monster to the back of paper.
• Fold a piece of leftover cardboard to get a higher block and glue it to the back of the monster. This will give your monster some body - it'll get a bit convex when you draw the sides in and you'll need something to glue your magnet to.
• Thread the tail of your knitting into the embroidery needle, stitch around the edges of the piece and draw the sides in (photo 6). Make sure that the outline of your monster looks smooth.
• With superglue, glue magnet to the back of your monster - finished!