Polyura sempronius

Polyura sempronius, or Tailed Emporer, was an order I was looking forward to! He's an Australian caterpillar (and a lovely black and white butterfly) that seems  to have a lot of variation from one instar to another. I was not able to find a whole lot of information about them, other than their host plant (wattles) and that their early instar looks like somebody made him out of sour gummy worm pieces. 

I began with the back piece, as usual, keeping it pretty simple and adding some surface stitching. I relied heavily on two photos- one that the customer chose as a favorite look and another that showed the full-body of the caterpillar. I took some creative license with the little side spikes and with the headpiece as well. The only difficult part of this pattern was attaching the headpiece to the caterpillar neck. It required some free-form crochet to make the 2 pieces fit. 

(Main reference photos from Google Images)

He reminds me a little bit of Yoda. 

Customer was happy! Yay!