Detailed Kitten Fuse Bead Patterns: 30 Large Cats, Paw Prints and Heart Hugs

Real coat colors set these 30 kitten fuse bead patterns apart, drawn with shading in the fur and a glint in each eye. There’s an orange tabby, a calico, a Siamese with a dark mask, a gray tabby, a brown tabby, white, black and tuxedo cats. Most wear a bow in pink, green, lavender, blue or red. Even the smallest design here takes about 5,500 beads.

Seven sets in the collection

• Eight heads: portraits with big bows, each a different coat. The brown tabby has a flower tucked behind one ear.
• Five sitting cats: orange, white, calico and black, plus a gray tabby waving one paw.
• Three sleepers: an orange tabby curled into a ring, a white cat on a lavender pillow, and a brown tabby wrapped in a blue blanket.
• Three paw prints: pink, blue and cream, each made of five loose pads.
• Three companions: an orange kitten with yarn, a white kitten holding a fish, and a gray tabby batting a ball of yarn.
• Five standing cats: black, orange tabby, calico, Siamese and silver tabby, the tallest pieces in the set.
• Three heart hugs: orange, tuxedo and white cats each holding a heart.

Several coats come back in different poses. The orange tabby in a green bow shows up as a head, sitting, curled asleep, with yarn, standing and hugging a heart, so you can build a small run of one cat if you’d rather not mix colors.

Planning a piece this size

Designs measure 99 to 154 beads on their longest side and use 5,498 to 10,189 beads. On 5 mm beads that’s roughly 19.5 to 30.3 in (49.5 to 77 cm); the standing Siamese is the tallest at 154 rows. With 2.6 mm minis the same grids come out at about 10.1 to 15.8 in (25.7 to 40 cm). The guide page for each cat gives its exact size at both pitches and how many 29 × 29 pegboard sections it spans, anywhere from 12 to 24 depending on the cat.

Each pattern has its own palette of up to 12 colors, lettered A through L. The letters restart with every design, so C on one cat may be a different shade from C on the next, and they aren’t any bead brand’s stock numbers. Each guide page shows the swatches with a count beside every letter, and the bead-count CSV has the hex value for each, which helps when you’re matching shades from a large bead stash.

Which PDF to print

Start with the 64-page guide, which gives one page of palette and sizes and one overview page per cat. For actual bead work there are two choices. The enlarged code charts print the letters large enough to read, with a black-and-white version that relies on the letters alone. The actual-size sheets print at true scale for 5 mm or 2.6 mm beads, with a 1 in (25.4 mm) bar to measure before you place anything. A 5 mm cat spreads over 9 to 16 Letter sheets, and a 2.6 mm cat over 4. Sheets join edge to edge with no repeated rows.

Standard 5 mm fuse beads like Perler suit the larger sheets, and 2.6 mm mini beads suit the smaller ones. Perler is a separate company with no ties to Doodlora Studio, and the designs carry no affiliation with it. No hanging holes are built into the designs.

Questions

Are any of these small enough for keychains?

No. The smallest design, the blue paw print, is 99 × 88 beads and 5,498 beads, about 19.5 in (49.5 cm) across on 5 mm beads. The read-me describes the set as large-format pieces for multi-board projects.

How do the paw prints go together?

Each paw print is five separate pads, four toes and the main pad. The read-me says to fuse them separately and arrange them afterward.