Microscopically knit apparel for Neil Gaiman's Coraline

Althea Crome might be the only person in the world who imagines everything she sees in miniature and then knits them with tiny, tiny needles and thread. The intricacy of her work is simply amazing--I'm a hobby knitter myself, and can't even imagine working on such a microscopic scale. She was actually commissioned to hand-make allsome of the apparel in the movie version of Neil Gaiman's Coraline. [Web Urbanist via Neatorama]

• [Flitere]

  Can I avoid sounding slightly irritated if I say that Althea Crome is hardly the only microknitter out there? Because I’m not irritated, but it is an established subvariant of knitting. A lot of the commercially available patterns are at 1/12 and 1/24 gauge, but that’s just because those are the standard dollhouse gauges. It gets smaller. At the upper end of its range, you see sentences like “This doily was begun in quilting thread and finished with 100/2 cotton thread on size 0 needles.“ Further on down, they tend to say things like “I must be mad.”

  Knitters make miniature lace, wee tiny socks for the annual Wee Tiny Sock Swap (and, inevitably, itty bitty lace socks), and whatever else takes their fancy.

  They’re all daft, but it’s gorgeous work.

• [uberunit]

  “She was actually commissioned to hand-make all the apparel in the movie version of Neil Gaiman’s Coraline.”

  That’s not true. I believe she only knitted the blue & white “other world” knit sweater and the orange knit gloves. I might be missing another item. The rest was made by Laika’s wonderful costume department.

• [Telecustard]

  This is an amazing form of scale modeling. This is as cool as a little locomotive, or airplane. Methinks it’s time to break out the piano wire and thread.

• [Ghede]

  There used to be a lot more people who made tiny sweaters by hand, but they all went out of business when someone invented the teeny sewing machine.

• [nanner]

  yes, it says at the end of the clip that she made the sweater and gloves. either way she is a patient and talented knitter :)

• [subhan]

  I’m a fan of teeny-tiny crafts ( I do some mini-origami & some polymer clay work), this makes me want to get my wife to teach me to knit so I can knit little sweaters for my daughter’s toys!

• [monkey]

  multiples of each costumes were made for the film and it’s difficult to really appreciate the intricacies of the work until you see the characters in person. like the faces and many of the props for the film the buttons on their clothes were made via rapid prototype printer. on the screen they seem inches wide but they are smaller than the size of a pin head and sewn on with a single ply of thread and a beading needle. the workmanship is absolutely amazing. i understand there will be an in depth feature with georgina, the head of puppet fabrication and her brilliant staff (including my pal margaret)on the dvd. if you ever get a chance to see the puppets at an exhibition, i encourage you to do so.

• [debg]

  Her work is just fabulous. And I believe I recognized the sweater she was wearing: it’s from Alice & Jade Starmore’s Tudor Knits. My “hobby” knitting actually supplies about half my wardrobe, hence the nerdishness.

• [wmperry]

  I’ve actually seen Althea knit one of these sweaters while we were on a SCUBA trip… it really is quite amazing to see her at work. You can see a lot of her pieces at her web site — http://bugknits.com/

  The one I actually saw her working on was the Greek Amphora II — http://bugknits.com/GreekII.htm

  -bp