They say that eyes are the window to the soul. Maybe your crocheted stuffed animals don’t have souls, but the eyes add quite a bit of character! Today I’m going to share a great tip for giving your crocheted eyes some extra pizazz.
Eye Options
You have lots of options for eyes on your amigurumi! You can. . .
crochet baby-safe eyes and add specks of light… the focus of today’s blog post!
Plastic eyes reflect a bit of light already. It gives them a nice, lifelike sparkle. But what about baby-safe felt or crochet eyes?
Well – you can add a little speck of light to those, too.
Adding specks of light to crocheted eyes
I first talked about adding a little yarn speck to your eyes in Cuddly Crochet, but I was reminded of the technique when I saw some fabulous projects by Stacey (a different Stacey!) on Ravelry:
Aren’t these fabulous? Stacey’s used the crochet baby-safe eyes, and embroidered the cutest little reflections on them!
Stacey’s done an adorable V-shape, but you can use a little knot or a simple line. To do this, you’ll want to embroider your detail on when you’re assembling the features on the head.
You can use this trick to add a unique flair to the eyes on any pattern! Give it a try!
Adding a small piece of felt decoration can be a quick and easy way to add character to your amigurumi faces! In today’s blog post, I’ll show you how to do it!
The glue will hold up pretty well, but if you’re making the toy for a small baby, I would recommend sewing the felt on with a sewing needle and thread. Better safe than sorry!
The Process
The thing I love most about felt is how versatile it is! Simply cut the shape you desire, and glue it onto your piece. I sometimes add my felt piece at the very end… so I can see what personality the amigurumi wants!
To glue a piece on, just add a dab of glue to the back of the felt:
And press into place. Voila! Allow the glue to dry completely, and you’re ready to go!
Some tips
Here are a few helpful tips to keep in mind:
The shape of your felt piece adds expression, so feel free to experiment! For example, a rounded tooth gives a totally different expression than a pointed one!
Amigurumi are made from round balls… and in general, flat pieces don’t glue well to balls! To make sure your felt stays, attach to a relatively flat portion and keep your felt pieces small.
If you don’t like the look of your felt, just pull it off before the glue dries! You can gently wash the remaining glue off with a wet washcloth.
I hope you enjoy experimenting with adding some felt to your amigurumi!
And remember, you are the one crocheting! Even if a pattern doesn’t call for a felt facial feature… feel free to modify it and add one! It’s your piece!
Here are handy links to all the posts about faces and details. . .
There’s no right way to hold your yarn while crocheting. Whatever works for you is the way you should do it!
But, I’m often asked how I hold my yarn… so I’ll tell you! You may like it, you may not. My feelings won’t be hurt if it’s not for you!
I’m right-handed, so I hold my working piece and the yarn in my left hand:
As you can see, I hold the piece I’m working on between my thumb and index finger. I hold the tension with the working yarn pressed between my pinkie and my palm.
This allows me to keep a constant tension on the yarn, without the pausing that happens if you wrap your yarn around a finger.
The yarn runs from my work, over my index finger, and then under my middle, ring and pinkie fingers to end up squished by my pinkie:
Keeping the yarn on top of my index finger is another handy trick… it allows me to dip my hook in a stitch and under the yarn with just a tiny movement of my index finger:
This hold allows me to crochet smoothly, without moving my fingers/wrists around too much. Which is good, because I get very achy wrists, and keeping movement down really helps!
How do you tension your yarn? How’s it working for you? Just in case you’re curious, I hold my yarn the exact same way while I’m knitting… but I know there are lots of other ways that work beautifully for people!
Here are handy links to all the crochet troubleshooting posts. . .
Right now, I’m reading Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything. Want to know one thing I’ve learned? Experts can’t store more individual items in memory than beginners… but they can store more information overall because they divide content up into useful chunks.
What experts look like
Ever heard someone describe their project as, “Oh, I don’t need to look at the pattern. It’s just a basic top-down sweater with a raglan sleeve and waist decreases worked in stockinette with ribbing at the edges”? This causes most beginners to gasp… what? No pattern?!?
An expert is able to store the entire pattern for a sweater in memory because they’ve chunked big pieces of relevant information. Some examples of chunks:
Stockinette is knitting every row (when worked in the round) or knitting the RS row and purling the WS row (when worked in rows).
A Raglan sleeve is worked by increasing on each side of a stitch marker, every other row, until piece reaches desired size.
A top-down sweater is worked starting at the neck, down to the body.
Waist decreases are achieved by inserting a decrease on the sides of the sweater, and repeated every 4 rows.
And so on…
None of these items are secret knowledge. But they’re bits of information that has been acquired sweater after sweater, pattern after pattern.
What this means about beginners
If you’re a new knitter or crocheter, I don’t need to tell you how hard it can be to start! But, if you’ve been at it for a while, it’s easy to forget how tough it once was. But, when you’re teaching newbies, it’s incredibly important to remember how hard it is, in order to avoid a frustrating experience for everyone!
You have 7 (plus or minus 2) spots in your short term memory. That’s it. And that’s all people, even if you’re a genius. It’s how brains are built.
Now, let’s look at someone who’s beginning to crochet… starting with the basic stitch, the single crochet. The steps are:
Insert hook into the next stitch.
The next stitch is the one that hasn’t been used, and looks like a sideways V.
Wrap the yarn around the hook.
Pull the hook, catching the yarn, through the loop on the hook.
Don’t forget to rotate the hook down so you can catch the yarn!
Wrap the yarn around the hook again.
Pull the yarn through both loops on the hook.
That’s it! They’ve already used their 7 memory slots!
It’s pretty much useless to say to a (complete) newbie: “single crochet 3 stitches, then double crochet 3 stitches”… because there’s not enough spots in their memory to do it! They used all of their spots remembering the single crochet!
This sounds like a trivial point until you’ve run into a few less-than-gifted teachers. You know, the people who tell their (30-minute-old) knitters to ‘work a 2×2 rib’… when they don’t even have a grasp of the basics of successfully completing a knit stitch.
When teaching, channel the difficulty encountered by newbies, and keep their memory space in mind. Then, you can lead them to becoming experts!
Becoming an expert
All it takes to become an expert is one thing: practice.
Boring, right? No tricks, no secrets. Just doing the same thing over and over again until it becomes second nature.
After you’ve single crocheted for a while, you’ll no longer have to run through all 7 individual steps to complete the action. You’ll just ‘know’ the stitch, and it’ll only take up one slot in memory. Giving you space to start working on larger chunks!
For teachers, this means allowing students to work on a skill until they ‘get it’, and are ready to move on to the next concept. It may sound harsh, but I’ve been known to tell some students in my beginning knitting classes that they’re not ready to learn to purl. Their memories were still filled with the 7 steps of doing the knit stitch… and those were just going to be washed away by learning 7 new steps for purling. They thanked me, because it meant that, at the end of class, they had a skill they were solid on- instead of leaving confused.
What are you working on becoming expert at? Has it taken more or less practice than you expected?
I’ve crocheted all of my cow pieces, and attached his features… the only thing left to do is stuff his head & body and attach them!
Stuffing the head and body can be a little tricky, since they’re large pieces. You want to be sure to add plenty of stuffing (to compensate for compression over time), but be careful to not overstuff (which will force the stuffing to show through your stitches).
To stuff your cow’s head/body, take a big fluff of stuffing, and put it in.
Putting in a big fluff of stuffing is better than poking in lots of little pieces of fluff… because little pieces will make your cow look lumpy. You don’t want that! If you add too much, you can just pull the extra out:
Attaching facial features can be one of the trickiest parts of making stuffed animals… but it’s also what brings your cutie to life! With just a few tricks, you’ll be positioning and attaching features with ease… and love your finished result!
At this point, I’m about to attach the snout. The pattern says to attach it to rounds 13-18 of the head, so I’ve marked these rounds with my locking stitch markers:
This makes it super-easy to see where my snout should go!
Once the snout is in place, it’s time to attach the mouth. Want to hear another great use for locking stitch markers? I use them to hold a piece in place… so I can see exactly what it will look like when attached! This saves me from attaching them, not liking how it looks, then re-doing it!
Keep using markers to position/attach the ears… and your cutie is on its way!
Other helpful tips
Use the running stitch for attaching the nostrils onto the snout… it’ll make them lie nice and flat!
Attaching a folded ear can be tricky… read this post to see it in action.
Looking for an even easier way to handle the folded ear? Whipstitch the flattened ear closed first… then you’re only dealing with 2 edges, not 4!
Stick your eyes in first… and check out how they look before you put the washers on. This lets you check out how the eyes will look before you affix them permanently!
When positioning spots, use those stitch markers! I like to put on a couple to hold my spot in place while attaching
How’s your cutie coming along?
We’re in the final week of the crochet-a-long! Here’s how mine looks:
So colorful!
Here are handy links to all the posts about attaching parts. . .
Most people tell me that they’ve got a handle on the crocheting part… but when it comes to assembling amigurumi pieces, they dread it! That makes me sniffle… making amigurumi should be 100% fun!
So, in this post, I’ll show you how to attach limbs easily and evenly… taking all the stress out of sewing. The trick to easy attaching is planning out your placement ahead of time. It’s a piece of cake after that!
Plan where to attach your limbs
I’m making Jackie the Cow and I’m about to attach the legs and arms.
The instructions say, “Attach legs to rounds 9-14.”
Of course, this is just a suggestion! You can attach limbs wherever you’d like… but I’ve told you where I attach mine so there’s no guesswork on your part!
What you want to do is find out where round 9 is, and place a locking stitch marker there. Start counting (see the ridges?) from the center:
Count until you’re at round 9, and place a marker. Place another at round 14. Now you know where your leg should be located on the body!
If you find that your pieces tend to move around a lot when attaching, you might want to go one step further and use locking stitch markers to hold your piece in place. The more you prepare your pieces, the easier sewing will be!
Stuff your limbs
Grab some Polyfill and stuff your limbs:
I like to stuff both legs at once, so I can be sure they are the same size:
Sewing!
It’s not as hard as you think… I promise! We’re going to use a simple whipstitch to attach the limbs… the important thing is to let your guides (the rows and stitch markers) do all the fancy work!
Thread the needle
To begin: thread a tapestry needle with the long tail of a leg. As the first step, I like to hide the knot… so I run my needle through the first stitch on the leg:
This hides the knot beautifully! See?
Whipstitch!
The leg that we’re attaching has 24 stitches. So, if we attach along 6 stitches to round 9, 6 stitches going up to round 14, 6 stitches on round 14, and then 6 stitches going back down to round 9… the leg will be attached evenly! So, begin by threading the needle through one stitch on the body and one stitch on the leg:
That’s it! You did a whipstitch! Check out this little video if you want to see it in action:
Continue to do 6 stitches on round 9… and then continue stitching (sorta turning 90 degrees) to get to round 14. See? You’re using the stitches on the body to guide you! Easy!
As long as you keep attaching one stitch of the body to one stitch of the leg, you’ll stay on track!
Continue all the way around, and tie a knot on the inside of your work.
Ta da!
Repeat for second leg
Now, at this point, you may want to get picky. See how there’s a jog in the leg where the colors changed?
If that jog bothers you… no problem! Just decide where to place your second leg so that the jog ends up at the back of the cow! See… I’m going to put my second leg over here (on the other side of the jog), leaving the color change nearly invisible:
Now attach the second leg… same as the first! Don’t forget to place your helpful markers if you need them!
Repeat for arms!
You’ve got it down, now! Attach the arms using the same method!
You did it!
That wasn’t so bad, was it?
Other Ways to Attach Limbs
There are a few other ways to attach limbs to crocheted softies – each gives a different look.
Does your pattern tell you to attach the piece with single crochet as you stitch? That’s my favorite way to attach limbs. The pattern will say sc-attach and you can find a video tutorial for that method here. This method works great for flopp[y limbs that are attached along a single row of the design.
Here are handy links to all the posts about attaching parts. . .
I’m lovin’ the Cow Crochet-a-long… I’m already seeing some fabulous finished cows! Don’t forget that, to have a chance to win the awesome prize, you’ll need to post a photo of your cow either on our facebook page.
How to connect spots
For those of us who aren’t finished… the tips are still coming! Click here to check out all the previous posts. To this point, we’ve finished the crocheting, and we’re getting ready to start sewing pieces together.
Today, I’m going to show you how to make the spots… which are made by assembling 2 crocheted pieces. Here’s what they look like:
Let me label them (since they’re called part 1 and part 2 in the pattern) to help you out a little:
So, the instructions tell you to attach the flat side of part 2 to part one. Do you see the flat side? I’ve indicated where it is in the picture above with a red line.
So, let’s start! First, thread a tapestry needle with the long tail of part 2:
Now, use a whipstitch to attach the flat side of part 2 to part 1. Anywhere along part 1 will do!
When you’ve gotten to the end of the flat bit of part 2… you’re almost done! Your piece will look like this:
Yay! Doesn’t it look like a cow spot? Now, just tie a knot, and you’re done!
If all those ends are bothering you (’cause there are a lot!), feel free to trim them… but be sure to leave the long tail that’s on part 1. You’ll be using that tail to connect the spot to the body.
Hooray! On Thursday, I’ll shop you how to attach the cow’s limbs easily and evenly!
Have you finished crocheting your pieces for the Cow Crochet-a-long? I’ve reviewed the basics for crocheting most of the pieces… but the mouth (and part 2 of the cow spot) are made by double crocheting semi-circles, which is a little different!
Video help is here!
What does ‘4th ch from hook’ mean? How do you turn? Those are just a couple of new terms that pop up when crocheting the cow’s mouth.
In case you’ve gotten stuck, I made a little video to help you out. . .
Show off your progress!
Now you should have all the skills you need to finish crocheting your pieces!
Here’s what mine look like:
Next week, I’ll be giving you tips on assembling this cutie cow’s pieces!
In amigurumi patterns, you’ll often see the instructions ‘Fasten off’ or ‘Fasten off with a long tail’. What does that mean? No worries, I’m here to tell you!
Fasten off.
Whenever you’re making a piece, and you’ve finished all the crocheting… you’ve got to end it! Even though the instruction ‘fasten off’ may sound a little obscure, it’s super-easy (and you’ve probably already been doing it)!
I’ve got a video here, followed by some step-by-step photos for if you just need a quick reference.
Here’s the video
And here’s the photo tutorial
Here’s my snout from my cow (because I’m doing the CAL!), and I’ve finished crocheting:
Remove your hook, making the last loop a little larger:
Now, pull the working yarn through the loop (you can either cut the yarn- see the next part of this blog post first- or pass the entire skein through the loop. Up to you!).
Check out that beautiful knot:
How much tail should you leave?
Excellent question! When you’re cutting your yarn when you’re fastening off), you always want to leave a few inches or so. That way, you’ll have enough to weave in (or hide) the tail on your finished piece.
When making amigurumi, you often want to leave a ‘long tail’… enough so that you can use the tail to attach the piece to another piece later on. I usually say about 12″, but a more accurate measurement is about twice as long as the last round of your piece.
Here’s the step-by-step:
Keep in mind, you can cut your working yarn while tying off the knot (see above) or after the knot has been fastened. Simply snip your yarn (leaving the length I described):
