Tunisian Crochet Mario Pillow

MATERIALS
•Tunisian Crochet hook size 4.5mm
•DK weight yarn
•Tapestry needle
•Fiberfill
•Measuring tape


* First Tunisian Crochet Project *
  Thanks to Another Kay Jones for inspiring this project. I had already made my son a Mario blanket and thought this will go great with it. Plus I let my son pick out the characters he wanted, so he's going to love it when it's done. :) I'm going to be making him another pillow but with different Mario characters so he can have two.
  I made the charts on Microsoft Excel except for Goomba, I copied that one from Another Kay Jones and the others from doing a Google search and making them into 8-bit graphs. If you want to use different characters, there are plenty to be found on the web by searching for 8-bit Mario characters or anything along those lines.
  When working from these graphs you gotta keep in mind that one square equals one stitch, the amount of stitches you need on your hook needs to be one more than the amount of squares you need.

Ex: On the small graphs theirs 32 so I need to chain 33 stitches.

  Since I don’t know how to add Microsoft Excel files on here, I have just put the images up. If you would like me to e-mail you the Excel files, feel free to contact me. (Links on how to contact me are on the upper left hand side).
  To save on sewing (which I’m not great at), I made the character squares two at a time, so I crocheted the Goomba and Boo as one piece, with the color change half way, then I did the Blooper and Bomb-Omb as one piece. Then whip stitch the two pieces together. I use whip stitch when sewing the whole pillow together.

A site and videos on how to Tunisian Crochet
-An Introduction to Tunisian Crochet; it has images to show you how to while your reading. Great site, this is the one I use to learn.
-If your more of a video person rather than reading then this video is great for you.
-To bind off your work watch this video.
-For color changes watch this video.

Tips
-On the basics tutorial video, it says for the last stitch of the forward pass, put the hook through the two end stitches. Cause if you don't and when its time to sew them together the edges are gonna look holey. Just in case this happens to you. Simply use the same color thread and sew it so it wont look so obvious.
-On the color changes, don’t pull the threads too tight. If you’re doing a square with a lot of color changes start a new yarn thread cause if you keep pulling them the square its gonna get smaller as you continue making it. (This happen to me with the first square)
-Measure! Measure! Measure! You don't want your square to look uneven.

8-bit Graphs
  Go ahead and use the graphs if you want these characters. :)

Boo 32x32

Bomb-Omb 32x32

Blooper 32x32

Super Mushroom 64x64

- Janet Carrillo