Amigurumi for beginners: your first project.

Amigurumi is the Japanese art of crocheting small stuffed figures. Animals, food items, characters, abstract shapes. If you can make a basic crochet stitch, you can make amigurumi. This guide walks through the tools, the stitches, and a simple starter project that you can finish in an afternoon.

The starter kit

Amigurumi requires very little equipment, which is part of its appeal. Here's what you actually need for your first project:

• Yarn: Cotton yarn in DK or worsted weight. Cotton holds its shape better than acrylic for small stuffed pieces and shows stitch definition more clearly. Scheepjes Catona, Paintbox Cotton DK, or any mercerised cotton in the 50g ball range will do. Pick a light colour for your first project so you can see the stitches easily.
• Crochet hook: Use a hook one or two sizes smaller than what the yarn label recommends. For DK cotton, that means a 3mm or 3.5mm hook. The smaller hook creates a tighter fabric with smaller gaps between stitches, which prevents the stuffing from showing through. This is the key difference between regular crochet and amigurumi.
• Stuffing: Polyester toy filling. Available in any craft shop. You don't need much for a small figure.
• Stitch markers: Cheap plastic locking stitch markers or even small safety pins. Amigurumi is worked in continuous spirals (not joined rounds), so you need to mark where each round starts.
• Yarn needle: A blunt tapestry needle with a large eye for sewing pieces together and weaving in ends.
• Safety eyes: Small plastic eyes with a post and washer back. 6mm or 8mm for a small figure. These get inserted before you stuff and close the piece.

Total cost for a complete starter kit: around £15-£20 if you're buying everything from scratch.

The three stitches you need

Amigurumi uses only a handful of basic crochet stitches. If you can do these three, you can make almost any amigurumi pattern:

Magic ring (magic circle)

This is how most amigurumi pieces start. Instead of chaining a few stitches and joining them into a ring (which leaves a small hole), the magic ring creates a fully closed centre. Wrap the yarn around your finger twice, insert the hook, pull up a loop, chain one, then work your required number of single crochet stitches into the ring. Pull the tail end to close the ring completely. No hole. This takes a few tries to learn, but once you have it, you'll use it for every project.

Single crochet (UK: double crochet)

The fundamental amigurumi stitch. Insert the hook into the stitch, yarn over, pull through the stitch (two loops on hook), yarn over, pull through both loops. That's it. The entire body of most amigurumi figures is single crochet worked in continuous spirals. The tight, dense fabric this creates is exactly what you want for a stuffed figure.

Increase and decrease

To shape the figure (make it wider or narrower), you increase and decrease. An increase means working two single crochet stitches into the same stitch. A decrease (invisible decrease is standard in amigurumi) means inserting the hook through the front loops of two adjacent stitches and completing them as one. Increases make the fabric grow outward (the belly of a figure). Decreases make it shrink inward (the top of a head).

Your first amigurumi: a simple ball

Before you tackle an animal or a character, make a simple sphere. It teaches you every technique you need (magic ring, working in spirals, increasing, decreasing, stuffing, closing) without the complexity of multiple parts.

The pattern

Round 1: Magic ring, 6 sc into the ring. Pull closed. (6 stitches)

Round 2: Increase in every stitch. (12 stitches)

Round 3: *1 sc, increase* repeat around. (18 stitches)

Round 4: *2 sc, increase* repeat around. (24 stitches)

Round 5: *3 sc, increase* repeat around. (30 stitches)

Rounds 6-10: Sc in every stitch. (30 stitches, no shaping)

Round 11: *3 sc, decrease* repeat around. (24 stitches)

Round 12: *2 sc, decrease* repeat around. (18 stitches)

Stuff the ball firmly at this point.

Round 13: *1 sc, decrease* repeat around. (12 stitches)

Round 14: Decrease around. (6 stitches)

Cut the yarn, leaving a long tail. Thread it through the remaining 6 stitches with your yarn needle, pull tight to close, and weave the end inside.

You now have a sphere. It took about 30 minutes. Every amigurumi animal, character, or object is fundamentally a variation on this sphere, stretched, squashed, or combined with other spheres.

Where to go next

Once you've made a ball, try adding safety eyes before you close it up, and you have a simple one-piece character. Add a second smaller sphere as a head, sew them together, and you have a snowman. Add four small tubes as limbs and you have a bear. Amigurumi patterns scale up from the basic sphere in this way.

Good pattern sources for beginners include Amigurumi Today (free patterns online), Ravelry (search by difficulty level), and the books of Toft and Lalylala, both of whom write patterns with exceptional clarity.

More crochet basics →