Beginner Help!

[Bex23]

Hi! I am a newbie to the obsession of crochet and I am currently in the middle of my first crochet animal, a giraffe!

I have got a bit stuck that I hope someone can shed some light on.

I croched my 4 individual legs fine and attached them to each other one after another till i got them in a straight line (instructions told me to do this and it worked perfectly) Then i brought my 4th leg around to my 1st, in a square so the legs were 2x2. Again looks great.

Then it says to start making rows to start building up the body. After a few rows it says this

Sew the legs together towards the middle forming a cross.

Now I know why they want me to do it, as the legs although sewn together do have a big gap in the middle so any stuffing for the body would fall out. Its more a case of what to sew it with.

 

I have 3 legs that have been fastended off (with about a 15cm tail) but I think this isnt long enough and also if i put the fasten off tail on my hook I have nothing to yarn over with. The 4 leg is currently attached to the ball of yarn that im making rows with body with.

Am I to uses a sperate ball of yarn on my hook and use this to sew them together? It was a crochet kit, so I hope the yarn is enough to do this .

 

I have come so far and it looks so good and im making it for my little girl, I just dont want to fall at the first hurdle,

 

So any help or advice would be great!!!

 

Thanks

[bgs]

Ideally it would have been nice if a tail from a leg had been left long enough to sew it together.  After the 4th leg does it tell you to break/ cut yarn or does it have you continue on to the body while still attached to the 4th leg? Normally I would want to use the same yarn to sew it together.  In order to not cut your yarn and then having to reattach it (which is an option) you  could unroll the ball of yarn and take a piece off the end.  Then roll it back up.  You wouldnt have to use the same yarn if you had something similar that you thought would work.  Kits should supply enough yarn to complete the project but if you would happen to crochet looser than they planned on you might run out. 

[Granny Square]

I lost you a little bit on the construction, but on the "maybe I should have left a longer yarn tail" issue - there are a few ways to join yarn in the middle of a row, like when you run out of skein 1 and have to grab skein 2.   

You could do a braided join, or a Russian join.   There are variations - this one for braided is not how I do it, I unply both ends, overlap and braid in both directions but I don't see why this 1 sided version wouldn't work just as well.  So in your case, you could just cut a length of yarn long maybe 25-30cm long - enough to sew pieces together with + a few inches to manipulate the needle with + weave in + to overlap join to your short tail.  The first time I did these techniques, in the middle of a row of knitting (stockinette, which is a "plainer" stitch than most crochet), I thought it would be really obvious but the joined spot is almost impossible to find later.