Have you heard of Amigurumi?
It is two Japanese words combined together to mean crocheted stuffed
doll and you pronounce it Ah-me-goo-roo-me
(glad to see my two years of high school Japanese are finally paying
off!). It’s a bit difficult to remember
and almost impossible to type correctly into Google so maybe we will see a good
nickname develop for in the next few years (please!). And of
course they have to be cute. Think Hello
Kitty and other cute Japanese cartoon creatures made out of crochet. More often than not they are animals, but
they don’t have to be. Best of all, if anyone in your family has a favorite character, chances are there is a cute free pattern so you can delight them by making them one!
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| An amigurumi version of an adipose baby (a cute Doctor Who character). Make your own using with this free pattern ... http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/amigurumi-fat-baby |
If you have never picked up a crochet hook before, I’d
suggest you start on a simpler more traditional crochet project. In my experience amigurumi is a bit fiddly -
you don’t want to be learning your basic stitches on something that is
fiddly. Also free patterns on the
internet often have mistakes and you need a little bit of experience with
crochet to spot and correct these problems as you go. Ideally you want a little bit of crochet
experience including reading a pattern.
You also want to have a little bit of experience with sewing - nothing
fancy – if you can do basic mending you are set. Having said all of that, I was looking up the
Internet to learn how to do some new crochet stitches and translate acronyms
for my first amigurumi. There really is
no excuse for not tackling a project these days with the help of Google. Go for it if you are really keen!!
In this post I have included pictures of my most recent amigurumi. It is an Adipose baby from
Doctor Who. It is a free pattern that
you can download from Ravelry (http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/amigurumi-fat-baby)
once you sign up to the website for free.
If you haven’t yet discovered Ravelry it is time you check it out (www.ravelry.com). You can search for and download the free
instructions to lots of crochet and knitting patterns. Best of all you can see how the pattern has
turned out for other people and the modifications they have made and find out
if anyone experience any difficulty with the pattern.
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| Amigurumi versions of Daleks from Doctor Who. Make your own using this free pattern ... http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/dalek-egg-cosy |
Arguably the most important and most difficult part of your amigurumi project will be adding a face.
Without even trying you can turn your amigurumi from a cute adorable
thing into a scary angry looking monster!
Or if you make the mistake of allowing the natural crochet holes to
control your embroidery, you can end up with a very unprofessional and ugly
looking result that really brings your whole project down. So be prepared to spend a bit of time getting
the face just right. And be prepared to
start over a couple of times if it is not looking right. I've included a picture of a partially complete embroidered mouth I tried for the adipose baby. In the show the character has a baby tooth showing that I wanted my version to have. But the mouth ended up making the adipose baby look scary rather than cute! So I removed it and started over again and copied the mouth used in the instructions. I may have had more luck with a felt mouth - there is more wiggle room as you can reshape it by trimming it - embroidery is not so easy to change.
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| A mouth I experimented with that makes the amigurumi look more scary than cute. |
