Continuing on my journey to crochet and review all of the Red Heart Amigurumi yarn cakes, I present to you my review of the the Sugar Skull and Bumble Bee cakes and patterns. ...I still wouldn't call myself a fan of Red Heart yarn, but I'm having a lot of fun with this series!
There is a surprising amount of diversity in style and complexity among all the different crochet patterns in the Red Heart Amigurumi series (I'm assuming the knit patterns are similar, but I haven't looked into them much), which is even more intriguing as I'm pretty sure that all the cakes have the same amount of yarn, and that each color section is equal between cakes; I'm still not 100% sure if each cake is divided equally among all four colors. I have yet to run out of yarn on a project, and, more times than not, will have more than enough to get creative.
I wonder if these patterns were designed within these constraints (which sounds tricky), or if Red Heart commissioned some patterns and then just sized the cakes/colors to be enough for the largest ones. This series is just so interesting, I'm sad that it seems like Red Heart won't be releasing more cakes/patterns.
The Sugar Skull cake has such an intense, eye-catching color palette! I tried to adjust the photos so they showed the colors accurately, but I'm not sure how successful I was (the purple is very rich and deep, and the green is quite bright; I think it's almost neon, but my husband disagrees).
I really like how these turned out, and I think the colors chosen for the original designs are perfect. They're quite simple, too; the skulls have some very basic shaping and the flowers are all made using the same pattern.
The colors and embroidered details, though, make them look more complex. I especially like how the flower centers are done in two different ways (the flowers for the eyes color change from the center color to the petal color, and the flowers on the top of the head have rustically embroidered centers).
I even had enough yarn to make two more skulls! These are palette-swaps of each other, similar to the original pair. I don't like the flower eyes on these as much as the first two; originally, I used the petal color to sew on the eye flowers, but on the second pair, I used the center color since there was a lot more contrast between the purple and white as compared to the orange and green. The latter way makes the eyes seem a lot larger and more cartoonish.
You can get a better idea of what I mean with the eyes when you see them all a group; the purple and white skulls just look more realistic, and more polished, than the orange and green.
I had a handful of each color left over, but not enough to make a fifth skull. I do like to hang onto these yarn scraps, though, as they're very helpful if you just need a little bit of color or for embroidering details.
If I hadn't decided to purchase and make all of the cakes and patterns in the Red Heart Amigurumi series, I probably would not have bought the Bumble Bee cake. I do think the sample Bees are cute (they're knitted on the cake label, but all the patterns come in both crochet and knit), but they're pretty simple.
I mentioned it in my other review, but in the pattern directions for these cakes, it's mentioned that your cake might have two color sections of the same color and that you can combine them when organizing your yarn. All of the cakes currently in the series have four colors, though some, like this one, probably would have benefited from having only three. The grey in this cake is kind of weird; I could see wanting to use it for the bees' wings since grey is a little more realistic than white, but it feels like it was included just to make the palette swap more interesting.
Even those these bees were simple to make, I think they turned out adorable! I did make some changes to the pattern; I gave the bees more stripes (the original pattern was similar to the sample bees on the label), to give the bee with a black head yellow safety eyes instead of using black eyes and a little bit of yellow yarn, and I gave both bees white wings since I wanted them to look more cartoonish.
I also added antennas (they're made using the pattern for the legs, but with 3sc in the 2nd ch from the hook), I changed the stingers so they weren't super long (the original pattern had an extra ch of scs sticking out, but I thought it looked weird), and I doubled the wings so they're each two circles sewn together instead of one; I think it looks cleaner that way and it gives them more structure.
I have a bunch of white and grey yarn left over (I didn't use the grey at all), but I'm not sure if I have enough yellow or black to make another bumble bee. I think a bee with a grey/white/black color palette would be cute, like a black and white cartoon, so I might actually make another (I just thought of this idea right now, and kind of regret not making one for this review...hmm).
Overall, I think these two yarn cakes/pattern sets are great! The yarn is the same quality as before; not perfect, but definitely some of the best I've used from Red Heart, and I will happily continue to crochet my way through this series! I do prefer the Sugar Skull cake and pattern to the Bumble Bees based on color palette and design, but both are the same in terms of quality.
I do recommend picking up these cakes if you are interested in any of the them; I purchased mine from Amazon for $7.20, but they are available from a bunch of different retailers for different prices. I wouldn't pay more than $7.20-$7.50 per cake, but I've seen them as cheap as under $3 (on sale at Michaels, though they're all out of stock online). The patterns are all free and available from Red Heart's website (both in knit and crochet), so no purchase needed to get them!
Thank you for reading! <3
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