AMHERST — Entirely knit with black yarn surrounding a foam interior, an enderman, the tall, thin blob seen in the Minecraft video game, is being turned into a three-dimensional form inside a classroom at Amherst Regional High School.

“I thought this would be fun to make, to do this entirely knit,” says senior Shahd Ahmed, as she continued to fabricate the enderman figure from yarn on a recent morning.

Over 10 days, Ahmed aimed to take a Crocker Farm School kindergartner’s illustration and replicate its details in textile form, while adding various touches, such as making one arm longer than the other, just as the drawing shows, and then sewing in the purple eyes.

Across the room, another enderman is being created, but senior Nolan Ross is using black fabric for his. The front and back of pieces of the square shapes are stitched together, before being flipped inside out to eliminate the seam. He then puts stuffing inside before sewing it closed. This will be complete when the purple eyes are added.

These soft sculptures, or stuffies, being created by 40 high schoolers, will soon be delivered to 57 kindergartners from three classes at Crocker Farm. The third year of the project, students in art teacher Kristen Ripley’s Sculptural Fiber Arts Class received the drawings in late February.

Ripley said all materials are donated and she spends a lot of time acquiring the material the students can use.

Before embarking on the project, students have learned various techniques from Ripley, such as the pillow method where they sew the front and back, or knitting and crocheting. The students have gotten foundational lessons, including identifying a range of stitches and how to thread a needle.

However the students make the pieces and do the problem solving to create them, though, “these need to be as true to the drawing as possible,” Ripley said.

Another student knitting is Claire Kennedy, a junior, who earlier created a soft figure from fabric.

“This felt like a change of pace for my second,” Kennedy said, as the tan yarn was knit into a sheet and will later be formed into an animal. “You have to have a lot of it, but it will get done.” The animal will also be holding three balloons, in different colors, which Kenney anticipates will mean attaching fabric to her knit creation.

“I’m actually enjoying this a lot,” said Mariam Ben Nekhi, a senior, as she finished the body of a brightly colored, multi-legged animal, and was in the midst of sewing together its pink head. With the fabric for the animal’s face held together by needles, Ben Nekhi said the final step for the stuffie would be using a sewing machine.

For the high school students, the main challenges is not to vary at all from the drawings, though Ben Nakhi said there is some leeway, with students using more three-dimensional styles and more layers. “It’s easy and it’s hard,” Ben Nekhi said. “It depends which drawing you choose.”

Willow Burton, a junior, who selected a drawing of a snail because it might have been something she would have done when she was younger.

“I love sewing, so this is really fun,” Burton said.

But Burton found it difficult to create an aspect of the animal, getting advice from Ben Nekhi on how to manipulate the fabric so the shell for the snail would be true to the illustration. “I’m trying to get it to look as much like the drawing as possible,” Burton said.

Senior Cai Lawler was making his fourth stuffed animal, over the past two years, observing the experience might allow him to make a similar type gift for a baby cousin. Lawler chose a drawing that looks like a fly and used the pillow method.

“I’ve learned that I can make pretty much anything from fabric,” Lawler said.

Scott Merzbach can be reached at smerzbach@gazettenet.com.