How I came up with my Lion Dance Troupe
My latest collection featuring a Lion Dance Troupe is pretty meaningful for me and I had a couple of reasons to make it back in 2020. After getting down to putting the pattern together and all the pictures, I decided it’s in time to release for Chinese New Year!
Inspiration
During Chinese New Year, traditionally it is an occasion of great festivity and noise. This is actually what my parents in law place looks like during Chinese New Year.
The lions, as part of the Lion Dance, will pluck auspicious vegetables like lettuce which are usually hung up high. They represent cǎi 採 cái 财 aka meaning to pluck fortune. The lions will then eat them and spit them out for good luck.
Trial and Error
Like with most pattern designing, there is a fair amount of trial and error before settling on a final pattern design. Making the Lion head was probably the most fun and challenging part!
1) Basic pattern testing with a single colour first
My initial iteration did not turn out too good. My sister even mentioned the head just looked like there were a lot of lumps on it lol.
With a single colour, the contouring was not so evident yet but I had to get the basic head shape down first.
After I finished the head, I moved onto the body and attempted to make the frills along the back. The whole lion costume piece was one continuous stitch. Subsequently, there were minimal attachments to the head.
2) Testing with a variety of colours
As you can see, I thought the black lion looked quite interesting so my first attempt at colour was actually making the black lion.
After I tried it out, I found the black yarn was too overpowering and switched to red and yellow. Which was actually a more common colour combination for a lion dance troupe.
The Boys and their significance
The boy on the left has the name ‘Zhang’ or ‘张’ on it and it actually refers to my name. He’s the first boy I made and was supposed to represent me. This boy was meant to be the one standing in front when in the Lion dance costume.
As for ‘Lee’ or ‘李‘ on the right, he was supposed to represent my husband, who was also the boy holding the Lion at the back. It symbolizes my husband supporting me through life and always having my back. :)
For both boys, I used slightly different techniques to make their T-shirts. The frills on the boys’ pants are similar to the frills on the lion’s back.
Reason for making this set
I had a couple of reasons for making this set and one of the triggering factors was actually I was trying to join an Amigurumi.com competition and the theme was ‘Celebrations’. At that time, I decided to settle on a Lion Dance Troupe because it was close to home.
Another side and probably bigger reason was that I wanted to make this set to represent the opening of our clinic too. For us traditionally, when we have an occasion, a Lion dance being organized for say, the opening of a shop or business, helps to represent good luck.
Unfortunately, because we opened in the middle of a pandemic, Lion dance celebrations were not allowed and quite frankly, likely an insensitive thing to organize.
So we did our own soft opening and I made this set to symbolize the opening of our Clinic. Because my daughter was going to play with it, I did not physically bring it to clinic either. So it’s happily tucked away in a corner in our home.
P.S. I did fashion an ang bao around this design which I’ll release soon!
Techniques used
To make this set, I would say it’s an intermediate level, and I did use many of my usual techniques for the boys (it was an older set). Like the usual bobble stitches, popcorn stitches and surface crochet.
For the lion’s head, there were many cluster stitches involved, including single and double cluster stitches, which did help create all the bulging textured components.
All in all, this set is pretty near and dear to me. So hang around to see how it turns out…
