Hi! I’m Jay, a 25 year old crochet artist, who started making videos on TikTok to inspire others to create! In doing so, I became even more inspired by my viewers! In fact, I became so inspired that I began to accumulate so many plushies and ideas that I decided it’s finally time to share them with everyone.
About Me
I became interested in crochet when I was 16 scrolling through Pinterest, where I discovered amigurumi. As a craft/art lover myself, I thought to myself “I could learn how to make that.” And that’s exactly what I did! I did some research and watched a bunch of YouTube tutorials, and made some subpar little creatures! As a teenager who explored many crafts, I quickly became disinterested in crochet because my projects just weren’t turning out how I wanted them to.
Six years later, I came across the crochet side of TikTok and became inspired to make some of the things I watched others make! So, I decided to re-learn how to crochet and this time around I felt a bit more confident. It brought me a bit of happiness and fulfillment in what was a really chaotic time of my life. It quickly became a catharsis for me!
As I came across more and more crochet videos on TikTok, I realized there was a huge community that I wanted to be a part of! This is how ‘crochetbykittengrll’ was born! My personal TikTok account was ‘kittengrll,’ based off my Xbox gamer tag, which was really just a cringe, silly name that I made on the whim when I was in college! I didn’t put much thought into my name just because I didn’t expect it to go anywhere. However, I began sharing my journey with crochet and it began to inspire and resonate with others, which is what has lead me here today! Crochetbykittengrll is the name that everyone knew me by on my social media, so I figured it would be best to just stick with it! I didn’t really care to change it regardless because I think it’s goofy and fun and matches the vibe of what I do and who I am!
As I progressed in my crochet journey, friends and family began asking me to make them things. Then friends of my friends began asking me to make them things, and so on… After a while, everyone was encouraging me to broaden my horizons and start officially selling my crochet plushies, but I remained stubborn. I felt very attached to the things I crocheted because I put SO much time, effort, and detail into them. It was hard to let them go! I also struggled with the idea of how long crochet takes, and how to price my artwork fairly. Sometimes it seems as though people don’t value crochet as an art form and don’t treat it as such, which is very discouraging when starting a handmade fiber arts business. Overall, I wanted my hobby to remain a hobby and not become a chore or a job.
After a while of following other crochet artists’ patterns, I began to pick up on how to make different shapes myself. I learned through practice and patience how to freehand my own plushies! I lacked the confidence that anything I freehanded would actually turn out good, so I never really wrote them down into patterns. However, I ended up needing to make something twice for a commission, so it was necessary to write down what I did so that I could make it again! I ended up being really proud of what I had created and it even went viral on TikTok. Many people were requesting the pattern, so I ended up creating an Etsy account, and this was how my iconic Top Hat Teddy pattern was born!
The success of this pattern release made me want to really focus on designing my own crochet creations. It gave me the confidence I needed to realize I was actually ‘good’ at crocheting! As we all know, Etsy takes out a great deal of fees, so I quickly wanted to branch out and create my own website! This pushed me to take the leap and actually start selling plushies! I was beginning to accumulate a lot of plushies that I really didn’t need, even after gifting many of them to my friends and family, so it just made sense. Now here I am selling my handmade plushies!
I am so thankful to everyone who has and will support me. My main goal is to help inspire others to create and remind everyone that fiber art isn’t a lost or forgotten art. The possibilities are truly endless!