Tortoise Jumper

Tortoises being every growing in popularity in our homes this fun craft could be just for you. Crocheting a jumper will make your tortoise not only cosy and warm for their wonders around the lounge but also looking pretty snazzy too!

Materials needed:
Yarn
Crochet hook with correct size for the wool. (Any thickness wool is)
Scissors
Darning needle (for ends)

It would help if you know the:
Chain
Slip stitch
Double crochet

The tortoise jumper can be made one or two ways. The first being one big hexagon and the second would be making lots of small hexagons. My preferred is lots of little ones as at the end you achieve more of a dome and cosy fit.

The easiest way to crochet a hexagon for beginners and advanced is the 'granny crochet'

Start by making a magic loop or chain 4 and join with a slip stitch to form a ring.
Chain 2 (these do not count as a stitch), and then 12 double crochet into the ring.
Close with a slip stitch or a neat join

Join the next color yarn into any stitch. Chain 3 and then 1 double crochet into that same stitch.

Skip a stitch then 2 double, chain 1, 2 double into every other stitch around the pervious circle. When you have completed five points make 2 double and 1 chain into the first stitch and join with a slip stich.

Skip 1 chain space, 3 double crochet into the next chain space.

2 double crochet, chain 2, 2 double into chain space at the next point.

Repeat this 4 more times until the reaching all the way back round, joining with a slip stitch.

Repeat the process of the hexagons until you have 7. You may need to adjust the hexagons size to the size of your tortoise. For ours being around 18cm we just used the above but this may vary when they get bigger etc.

Put the hexagons together and sew along the edges. One hexagon goes into the middle and the other 6 around the surrounding edges. You should start by attatching the main one to the edge ones. Then move on to attatching the outer hexagons edges together which will form a dome shape. This can be done by simple yarn or crocheting them together.

Crochet a rectangle for the bottom of them although this is not compulsory. Attatch the rectangle to one side and to the other put a button. We tried the method of just attatching both sides but getting it on was a pain so we reverted to the button.

Here for the Christmas hat we made a small pompom using the cardboard circle method.

Put it on and enjoy! :)

As you can tell In our household we are a big fan of the Christmas jumpers for Gertrude the tortoise