It’s Tip Tuesday! Today, I’m going to share my trick for cutting down on the crochet-time of an adorable stuffed animal!
We’ve all been there before: you have a baby shower/birthday party/event to go to this weekend, you want to crochet an adorable stuffed animal, but you don’t have a lot of time. What can you do?
You can slash your crocheting time with a combo approach: use a bulky yarn and downsize the pattern!
I do this all the time… and it cuts my crochet time by about 30%, and you still get a great result! Let me walk you through it.
The side-by-side comparison
Here is an owl that I crocheted following the pattern exactly (using a worsted weight yarn):
Now, here is an owl that I crocheted using a bulky yarn and a ‘downsized’ pattern:
Can you see a big difference? Probably not! They’re both 8″ tall… but the second one took me far less time to crochet! And you can do it, too!
The trick
The pattern I’m using is Nelson the Owl, but this trick will work on almost any amigurumi pattern.
My owl pattern calls for a worsted weight yarn, and tells me to do work 10 increase rounds for the head & body. So, here’s what I do to speed up the process: I use a bulky-weight (thicker) yarn and tweak the pattern to crochet a smaller amigurumi, basically working fewer increase rounds than the pattern says to.
You’ll want to read this blog post for details on how to crochet a smaller amigurumi… why smaller? Well, because you’re using a thicker yarn- you’ll end up with the same sized owl, but with less crochet time!
You ready to try it?
For my quicker owl, I worked 7 increase rounds on the head and body and crocheted the other features as written in the pattern. This means that the features (eyes, feet, ears) will be slightly proportionally bigger than on the original owl… but that doesn’t bother me! In fact, I think it’s a little extra-cute!
So, are you ready to give it a try? It takes a little bit of experimentation (to get the hang of making a smaller amigurumi pattern), but once you’ve got it… you can save oodles of time!
Here are handy links to all the posts about crocheting stuffed animals in different sizes. . .
- Four Easy Tips for Crocheting GIANT Amigurumi
- How to Crochet Smaller Amigurumi
- A Shortcut for Crocheting Stuffed Animals Faster
Return to the main table of contents for Let’s Learn to Crochet Amigurumi.
Move on to the lessons for crocheting more advanced shapes.
Happy stitching!
Those owls are adorable! I can’t really crochet, but that sounds like a great tip.
This is a really cool idea! I may have to try this in knitting sometime! 🙂
Thats an awesome tip, thankx for sharing!!! I think the second owl actually looks better =D
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Do you use the same size hook as stated in the pattern, even though you’re using bigger yarn?
If you’re using a bigger yarn, then you’ll want to use a bigger hook, accordingly.