The first pattern I ever released was a pillow based on the fossils in Animal Crossing: New Horizons. (Get the pdf here or on Ravelry.) At the beginning of the pandemic, my husband was playing a lot of Animal Crossing (along with most people who had a Switch). I thought the unidentified fossils were very cute, and I liked the idea of finding them around our house.
I saw some cool patterns for fossils on Ravelry, but they were too small, too round, or required more seams than I wanted to sew together. After searching, I saw that the pattern I was looking for didn’t exist yet.
So I made a pillow using top-down construction, worked in the round. I wanted the top to be smooth and round, and the bottom to have rounded corners.
For the stars, I looked at a few star patterns to get an idea for shaping. The shell was a bit trickier, and I ended up designing something that looks less like the image in Animal Crossing: New Horizons, and a bit more like an actual nautilus fossil. I made up two new stitches so that the spiral would keep expanding.
I made several more of the fossil pillows after the prototype and first test, and released an updated version of the pattern with a slightly smaller shell. This helped with my problem of fitting the shell and both stars on the pillow.
Unfortunately, it didn’t fix my struggles with placing the stars and shell! I don’t seem to have the patience to pin them down and adjust, and I never seem to notice whether the placement is weird until I’m done sewing it up.
The pattern makes a small throw pillow about 12 inches tall, a great size for squishing or taking a nap. For the prototype, I sewed on a pocket to hold a pillowcase, because I knew that my husband would take a nap on it, and it’s easier to wash a pillowcase than a pillow!
Of course I had to get some action shots as well…
Please enjoy this free Animal Crossing fossil pillow pattern! Download the pdf here or on Ravelry.