Your Amigurumi Questions Answered | Podcast Episode #69

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We’re answering as many of your amigurumi questions as possible.

Stephanie from All About Ami and I reached out to you on Facebook and Instagram to find out what you’re number one question is related to amigurumi. Then we compiled a list and answered as many as possible!

Special Guest

Stephanie is the kind and talented lady behind the beautiful All About Ami creations. Fun fact – her husband works with her to bring these cuties to life! In the planning phases of “Amigurumi Month” here on the podcast, Stephanie was the person I just had to have back on the show. In her first episode, session 15, we talked about the importance of a community for both bloggers and passionate crocheters. She knocked my socks off then and (if it’s even possible) she blew me away even more with how much she was able to teach in a short amount of time.

Episode Transcript

Brittany:
Welcome to episode number 69 of the BHooked Podcast. Thank you so much for joining me today. Man, we are well on our way to episode number 100. I mean, it’s really right around the corner. We’re definitely going to have to do something special for that episode.

But man, do we have a good one planned for you today. I am so excited about my guest and having her back on the show because in episode 15, she really just blew me away. She blew you away with… perspective on a crochet community, what that means to her and what that should mean to you as somebody who is trying to whether grow a business or really just enjoy every benefit that they can of their craft.

Well, her name is Stephanie. She runs the website All About Ami. Her and her husband are a duo. And how fun would that be to be able to just work with your husband on your designs and he helps her with the drawing and the creating and the vision for each one of her patterns. And of course, she crochets them and brings them to life. And it’s so fun to hear that side of her story.

We get into that a little bit at the beginning, but the main focus of our talk today was really to answer your questions. I wanted to do something just a little bit different today, shake things up a little bit, and have sort of a Q&A style session. So we were brainstorming the best way to do that and we thought no better way than just to ask you exactly what you want to hear.

So we reached out to you on Facebook and Instagram, both Stephanie and I did, and we asked what your number one question is related to amigurumi. Now I would definitely consider Stephanie an expert in the space of amigurumi. She knows her stuff. She’s been doing this for a long time through trial and error. And she’s so down to earth about how she learned some of these things. And a lot of times the answer is we just learn the hard way.

But she has an answer for every single one of those common questions that came through in those posts. And we tried to pack in as many as we possibly could. And I really hope you enjoy the style today. You’re going to need a notepad if you don’t have one next to you because she just drops value bomb after value bomb. And Stephanie, I love you for it. Thank you so much. Just before we even get started, because I know you’re going to help so many people.

Well, before we dive into that Q&A session with Stephanie and I, I want to take a quick moment to thank my sponsor Annie’s for allowing me to bring you this episode today.

Now, summer is in full swing and I’m really excited because next week, my husband and I are going to go on a little mini vacation. And of course, I’m excited to explore and to get away and to have a vacation. But I’m also really excited because I have a wonderful project that I’m going to take with me and I hope to have it finished throughout next week.

Well, I told you last week I’ve been working on the Sedona shawl from Annie’s Hook and Needle Club and I love that the pattern is completely portable. Rather than having to download the pattern on my phone or accessing it through the internet, I have a physical copy of the pattern and it’s in a nice printable booklet, full color, nice paper, and it’s relatively small, so I’m not carrying around this big, huge piece of paper with me or I’m not stuffing it into my project bag and letting it get all wrinkled and messed up.

No, it’s a convenient little booklet that I can slide down in one of the pockets of my project bag. So when I need to refer to the pattern, I can just refer to it whenever I need it. I don’t have to grab my phone. I don’t have to be on the internet to do that. And so that’s been a really big perk for me.

I personally have found a lot of value in a subscription service that brings a project to my door every single month. And for me, that project has been deemed like my passion project or my personal project or my project that I’m going to gift to somebody who is very special to me. That’s been a very therapeutic process. It kind of separates work and pleasure, if you will.

And if you’re looking for something similar, I would definitely encourage you to check out Annie’s Hook and Needle Club. You can find out all of the details at annieskitclubs.com slash behooked. That’s B-H-O-O-K-E-D. You can join today. You’ll get 50% off your first kit. And then after that, you’ll pay just $19.99 a month plus shipping and handling. And if you have any questions about it, I’m here. I have the kits in hand. I know you might have a question before you sign up for that. And if so, feel free to drop me an email.

Okay, so I have an action-packed episode planned for you today. Stephanie is going to answer as many as your questions as she possibly can throughout our episode today, so I don’t want to delay. Let’s just dive right in to your questions with Stephanie from All About Ami.

Stephanie, hi. Welcome back to the show. I am so excited to have you here today.

Stephanie: 6:21
Yeah, I’m so excited that you had me way back then. I’ve been following along with the podcast, listening to your episodes, and I wanted to congratulate you on posting episodes… the podcast every single week with so much content, new guests, and I’m really, really excited that today I can talk about something that I love, Amigurumi.

Brittany: 6:37
Yes, yes. Well, that warms my heart. Thank you so much for that. It is definitely a passion project, but I wouldn’t have it any other way. It gives me the opportunity to connect with people like you and share your wisdom with the world.

Thank you. I’ll try. All right, so for people who may not know who you are now, well, first of all, I would recommend going back to episode number 15 because we really get into your story a little bit more there. But tell us a little bit about you and what you have going on right now. I mean, it’s a year later from the last time you were here, so I’m curious of what you’ve been up to.

Stephanie: 7:11
Thank you, Brittany. Well, I am a crochet designer. I post all of my patterns on my blog, and I started off with solely amigurumi patterns but now I’ve kind of branched off into wearable items and household items. And I guess since last year I’ve been posting pretty much free patterns still every month and some exciting things happened along the way like I was able to go to New York City for the Lion Brand Yarn Blogger Bash and connect with other bloggers so that was really neat. And yeah, so I’m still just chugging along posting new content and trying to continue my skills.

Brittany: 7:50
Oh, that’s cool. I love how you said that you kind of broke into the world of garment making. I feel like so many of us are doing that right now. It’s like we’re finally getting the strength, I guess, to dive into that and all that is required for garment…

Stephanie: 8:06
…designing. Yeah, it seems kind of daunting at first, but it’s really fun and amazing being able to put—like, wear—something that you designed and figure out the sizing and how it’s going to drape on your body. And it’s been really neat seeing people, more and more people try that on Instagram. It’s really beautiful.

Brittany: 8:22
Yeah, it is. And so, like you said, you’re definitely very known for amigurumi. You had one pattern that you released a couple months ago that I think just made Instagram blow up, first of all. And it just, like, shocked everybody at how amazing—at least it shocked me—of how, like, perfect this design… it was your Chinese New Year dog and I’m going to link to it in the show notes because I want people to be able to see it. It is absolutely amazing.

Stephanie: 8:53
Oh thank you. You know, honestly it shocked me too because—so I design in collaboration with my husband Ryan and he’s very creative, very crafty—and every year we design some sort of Chinese New Year amigurumi depending on what zodiac animal it is. So it might be a bunny, it might be a snake, and this year was the dog.

And we had the idea to do a fuzzy amigurumi and… Previously in the past, if we wanted to do a fuzzy Amigurumi, we would use fuzzy yarn. But then Ryan was the one who came up with the idea to really try the dog slicker brush, which we have done in the past. My second original design was a Valentine Teddy where we brushed the yarn, but it just kind of had a… not as intense brushing as the dogs currently have.

So that was a really neat process, actually. He tried a test swatch—so I crocheted a little swatch—and then he just went at it with the dog slicker brush. And when he showed me the final product, I was blown away by how fuzzy it was and how you couldn’t see the stitches anymore and how lifelike it looked with the fur. It really has that… It looks like it was felted versus crocheted.

Brittany: 9:57
Yeah, it really does. And it just… it’s so lifelike, too. I mean, a lot of people design amigurumi to be very character-like.

Stephanie: 10:14
True. Yeah.

Brittany: 10:14
But this was super unique. And I think it really has to do with that technique that he tried.

Stephanie: 10:14
Yeah. And then when he brought out the Sharpie, he’s like, “Let’s try…” Because at first we were going to maybe do color changes in your traditional way by switching yarn colors. And then he said, “Let me just try this Sharpie.” And we had a box of Sharpies. So then he just went at it with the test swatch again. And when he showed me how the colors spread as if he were really painting it, I was blown away because you could get such gradual color gradients versus, you know, very clear color changes. So that was really, really neat for me to see too.

Brittany: 10:42
Yeah, that’s cool. I never really—I haven’t looked through that post to see how you did the color. That’s interesting that you used a Sharpie.

Stephanie: 10:50
Exactly. And then he could concentrate the color in certain areas and then brush it out. So it really takes an artist’s hands to know where to paint it. And because once you… it’s pretty much permanent, right? So once you put it, you can’t erase it. So I’m glad. Yeah, he is very artistic. He did that portion.

Brittany: 11:07
Oh, that’s cool. It’s so fun that you guys work together like that.

Stephanie: 11:11
Yeah, it really brings us life. It’s so much fun. We’re sitting at the table and I’m crocheting pieces and then he’s brushing it. And then we’re trying to do it during daytime too so that we have light to take photos. It’s really, really fun.

Brittany: 11:21
Yeah. Yeah, that’s so fun. Well, I’m glad you’re able to share a little bit of that story with us because I definitely want to encourage people to check out that pattern if they haven’t seen it already. Thank you. If for nothing else than just to admire the artistry there because it’s gorgeous.

Thanks so much. So we coordinated before we did this interview because we wanted to do more of a Q&A style session. So we reached out to our audiences on social, on Facebook and Instagram. Another perk—if you don’t follow either of us, you should go ahead and do so for opportunities like this.

We reached out to you guys and asked what your number one question is right now with Amigurumi. And Stephanie and Ryan were so kind to compile a list of really great questions. We’re going to try to hit as many as we can here. I’m going to ask the questions and Stephanie, you’re the pro at this. I’m going to throw it in your hands and you’re going to try to answer as many as we possibly can.

So are you ready?

Stephanie: 12:28
I’m ready.

Brittany: 12:29
Sounds good. Okay. So the first question we have here is: How do you get fewer holes in amigurumi?

Stephanie: 12:34
Yes, so I wanted to mention three points for how to get fewer holes in Amigurumi.

The first is that you should definitely be using a smaller-than-normal crochet hook to get tight stitches. So typically when you buy yarn, on the yarn label, it’ll say, “Oh, with this worsted weight yarn, you can use a 5mm crochet hook.” That is if you’re crocheting maybe garments or a basket or something. But if you’re doing amigurumi, you want to move, I would say, at least two hook sizes down—so maybe a 3.25mm or 3mm crochet hook. That way, when you’re crocheting your single crochet stitches, there will be fewer holes so that the stuffing won’t go through and your gauge is tighter.

The second thing I would highly recommend is the magic circle. I didn’t discover this till later on. So before, I was doing chain two and then starting the single crochet in the second chain from the hook, but this leaves a tiny little gap at the beginning of all of your pieces. So if you’re making a head, arms, or legs, you’ll always have that tiny little hole. But if you use the magic circle, you will be able to completely get rid of those beginning holes.

The magic circle is a technique where you’re crocheting around an adjustable loop and then you pull the tail shut. And I actually have a tutorial for that on my blog as well, because when I discovered that, that was a game changer. You can actually use this technique for hats and baskets, purses—not just for amigurumi.

And the third thing I wanted to mention is the invisible decrease. This was another game changer for me because typically when you’re doing a single crochet decrease, it’ll get kind of weird and lumpy and there will be some holes. But when I discovered the invisible decrease, it’s so much smoother. You’re basically inserting your hook in the front loops of the next two stitches.

But for the invisible decrease to work, you need to make sure that the right side of the amigurumi is showing upwards. Otherwise, it doesn’t work.

So those—yeah—those are the three methods I would recommend: small crochet hook, magic circle, and invisible decrease.

Brittany: 14:37
Okay. I have a couple of follow-up questions for that. The first one for the invisible decrease. Yes. Do you have a resource on that where people can see it?

Stephanie: 14:46
Yes, I do as well. As soon as I discovered these, I was so blown away that I had to make a tutorial for it. And it was funny because I remember telling Ryan, I’m like, Ryan, there’s a magic circle and an invisible decrease. And he was like, you guys sound like you’re magicians. It sounds so like elusive, but these two techniques… are awesome so I actually made step-by-step um photo tutorials to show you exactly how to do.

Brittany: 15:08
Okay very cool I’ll link to both of those in the show notes page because it is kind of hard to hear something yeah I really let it sink in so we’ll have those resources. The other question I have is well with the magic circle a lot of people it’s just like their arch nemesis. And one of the things that I tried before that concept really sunk in for me is I would do that chain starting method, but I would leave the tail long and I wouldn’t work over it as I went. What I did was then I took that tail and I weaved it in around that circle and almost created a drawstring to pull. Have you ever tried that with the Megurumi? I don’t know if that would work. Nowadays, when I do a Mickey Remy, I use the magic circle. And back then, I was just using it for like hats and sort of those sorts of projects.

Stephanie: 16:02
That’s so smart, actually. I think, I’m guessing, I can’t really remember what I did back in the day, but I would also leave a long circle. And I’m guessing I would almost stitch the hole shut. But that’s smart to… to kind of weave it through and then pull it shut too.

Brittany: 16:15
Yeah, I think it worked out for the most part, at least for the hat. It didn’t really work its way out. I just made sure I was really diligent and going around and around as many times as I could. I would leave like a five or six inch tail and just keep going with it. And it seemed to work, but I haven’t tried it with the Megurumi. So I was curious if you had any experience. No, I, yeah. Okay. So you also mentioned the right side of amigurumi. That leads us into the next question that came in. Is there a right side and a wrong side of amigurumi and how can you tell the difference?

Stephanie: 16:47
Yes, that is a very good question. And I wanted to preface this by saying that technically there is no right or wrong side. It’s whatever you want. Um, cause some people prefer both, uh, a certain look to be showing on the inside or outside.

But what happened to me was I had been posting Amigurumi projects on my blog for I think a number of months. And then a reader informed me that in a very nice way, though, thankfully, I think in an email that all my Amigurumi were inside out. And I remember being completely mortified. And I didn’t know what she was saying. And I remember time kind of stood still. And I was like, what does she mean inside out?

And then suddenly I looked at the stitches of my Amigurumi and compared it to my book that I was referencing and the stitches did indeed look different. So then I quickly went on the internet, was trying to research everything. And what happens is that when you’re typically crocheting in the round, the right side is facing you. But as you continue crocheting a ball, the ball naturally starts to curve upwards towards you. So that means the right side is now the inside of the ball.

And the general consensus out there is that the right side should be facing outwards. So you need to flip your piece inside out at some point in time, either at the very end or while you’re working on it. So what I typically do now is after I make my magic circle, I just start flipping it inside out and working around and around because the two sides actually do look quite different. One is more bumpy and fuzzy, and the stitches actually curve diagonally more steeply.

And how you can tell is that the back side, or quote unquote wrong side, has these little horizontal bars that are visible, whereas the right side is generally more smooth, and you can see the Vs better. There are no horizontal bars. And I definitely noticed that when the right side is facing outwards, the Amigurumi balls are more round. They have a better shape, and when you stuff them, they just look so much better.

But what’s interesting is that when I’m working with fuzzy yarn, so for example, if I was making a fuzzy teddy bear, the wrong side is actually fuzzier. So I intentionally leave the wrong side facing outward so that side is fuzzier. And I’ve definitely noticed that there are some Amigurumi artists who prefer to keep their wrong side on the outside. And so it’s definitely personal preference.

Brittany: 19:04
Yeah, it adds, like you were saying, a different kind of texture to it. So I think in those cases… It is, like you said, personal preference and then just whatever your vision is for that design.

Stephanie: 19:14
Exactly, whatever your vision is. And I also wrote a blog post about this because I remember as soon as I discovered all this information– I was like, I need to share this with other people. And other people said the same thing, that they didn’t know why their stitches look different or that their pieces were inside out. So I did a side-by-side comparison of two bunnies that I made. And you can see the stitch difference and how one looks a little bit rounder. So you can check out that blog post too.

Brittany: 19:36
Oh, that’s cool. Yeah. I remember the first time I realized that working in the round was very different. Like one side to the next. I was working a hat again in single crochet. And… I sort of let it do its thing. Like you were saying, if you don’t kind of turn it right side out, then it automatically wants to be inside out.

I was just working and going along and didn’t really realize it until I think somebody brought it to my attention too. This is inside out. So it’s little tips like that that I think sometimes we have to sort of learn the hard way just to recognize that there is a difference because I didn’t really pay attention too much to it.

Stephanie: 20:21
Neither did

Brittany: 20:22
I. It’s so interesting. Yes. So another big question that I have seen over and over, came over a lot in our posts, is how do you achieve a smooth color change?

Stephanie: 20:34
Yeah, so when you’re working amigurumi, you’re typically working in continuous rounds, so in one large spiral. So if you’re switching colors, for example, say from yellow to black, you’re going to see a very noticeable color jog, because you’re working one yellow single crochet, and then the next one is a black single crochet.

So what I learned is that there is a way to make it less steep, so it’s not as much of a sudden change. So what I do is, when I’m about to finish off the last step of the yellow yarn, you have two loops left on your hook, you yarn over with the new colors, let’s say the black, and then instead of doing a single crochet, you do a slip stitch, and then a single crochet. So slip stitch in the next stitch, and then in the subsequent stitch, do a single crochet. So this kind of makes it more gradual, so it’s less of a steep incline versus just yellow and then black.

And I also illustrated this in my Amigurumi Bee tutorial, because there was a lot of striping there, switching from yellow to black. And then I always try to position that color change towards the back anyways because it is still– you see a color change, so I try to yeah make it less noticeable.

Brittany: 21:42
Yeah okay so you’re working that over three stitches technically you’ve got the one where yes you is sort of like your last stitch from the first color you slip stitch into the next one and then your color change happens on the third. So when you work back around do you work in that slip stitch as if it were a normal stitch a single crochet?

Stephanie: 22:09
Yes, yes I do.

Brittany: 22:10
Good deal. And you work the stitch the same way? Like you don’t do the front loop only or anything like that?

Stephanie: 22:20
Yeah, just the

Brittany: 22:10
same way. Okay. So what about not working in a spiral? Is that something that you would recommend to avoid this?

Stephanie: 22:20
Yeah, you could do that. I personally for amigurumi really do not like seams. That’s why I typically don’t join in the round. But definitely I think there are some designs out there where people would work in joined rounds that you could get cleaner color changes.

Brittany: 22:36
Yeah. I agree with that too. I’m not big on, on joining in with a single crochet because it seems like it always has a lean to it. So even if you’re trying to keep it on the backside of the work, depending on how long your repeat is, it might end up in the front.

Stephanie: 22:53
That’s true. That’s true.

Brittany: 22:54
That’s another thing I just completely learned the hard way. Good stuff here. So, um, is there anything else about color changes perhaps that may come up?

Stephanie: 23:07
I know some people like to do tapestry crochet too or just switching colors. And that looks really neat for Amigurumi too. It’s definitely a challenge, but that’s a… I remember doing a little Amigurumi penguin very early on, and that was kind of neat trying to do the– I was following someone else’s pattern, but the switching between black and white. And there they actually wanted the color changes to be more noticeable.

Brittany: 23:33
Yeah.

Stephanie: 23:34
Yeah. That makes sense. It’s neat trying to figure out colors.

Brittany: 23:37
Yeah. I know with tapestry crochet or any type of color work where you’re working over, like the non-working– It shows through. So if you’re working with the high contrast and your two colors like black and white for the penguin, it probably would be a struggle.

Stephanie: 23:55
And I know because since you’re working in a round, you could actually leave, like not work over the yarns. You could just leave it kind of hanging in the back. Yeah. It’s all going to be hidden inside the ball.

Brittany: 24:07
That’s exactly what I was about to say. That’s the cool thing about amigurumi. You can hide everything inside. You don’t have to leave in a lot of ends. If you have any ugly color changes, the world doesn’t have to see it.

Stephanie: 24:21
Exactly. That’s so true.

Brittany: 24:23
All right. Good stuff. So what about attaching limbs? Do you have any tips for this?

Stephanie: 24:30
Yes, this question came up a lot and attaching limbs can definitely be tricky. So first off, I wanted to start with really good tools. So this was something I discovered, I think a couple of years ago, and I feel like it’s a game changer. But typically, when you’re attaching limbs to a body, you are using a tapestry needle. And it’s hard because you’re trying to insert your needle into often like perpendicularly. But there is something called a bent tip tapestry needle, where you’re– the tip is actually bent, so it’s so much easier to pick up stitches from the angle at which you’re inserting it. So that was a really big game changer for me. Have you used them.

Brittany: 25:06
before too, Brittany? I have. When I discovered them, yeah, it was love. I don’t use any other tapestry needle.

Stephanie: 25:13
Oh, nice. Yeah, I love using it for everything, not just Amigurumi. It’s just so much easier to pick up stitches. Yeah, yes. So… Yeah, and then you really want to visualize how you want your limbs to be. So say you have an arm and it has an opening on one end. You could either flatten it, sew it shut, and then sew it onto the body, which makes it a bit easier. It also gives a floppier look. But you could also leave the opening open and then sew it onto the body.

So typically when I’m trying to sew, say, an arm onto a body, I insert my needle into both the front and back loops of the arm, pull through, insert my needle into the body around the post of the stitches, and then pull through. But the tricky thing is that if you just go around and do this, your arm is going to be sticking straight out perpendicularly from the body.

So what we typically do too is sometimes we want to tag down the arm. So we’ll kind of attach stitches from, let’s say, the second or third last round of the arm onto the body to really pull it down so it’s not just sticking straight out. And one of the things that I’m very conscious of is sometimes when you’re sewing an arm onto a body, you really are zeroing in on the stitches and you’re just going around, going around sewing. But then when you take a step back, you say, oh, this is not what I was going for. Maybe it’s not symmetrical.

So after attaching a couple of stitches, we will take a step back and look to make sure it’s still where we want it to be. Attach a few more stitches, take a step back. Let it fall naturally and see how the arm is looking. So that way at the very end, you’re not totally shocked that it went out of place. So you’re constantly checking, taking a step back and trying to look at the final picture.

Brittany: 26:55
Yeah, that makes sense. So do you have a certain stitch that you’re using like whip stitch or just going back and forth? Is there any one way that may be better than another? Typically, I—

Stephanie: 27:09
whip stitch the pieces together. Yeah, I like the whip stitch. And another tip I was trying to think about is trying to make things symmetrical can be tricky. So if you’re say you’re attaching an arm between round seven and eight, and it’s time to do the arm on the other side, you can try to go around the other side, look for round seven and eight and try to attach the arm in the same position.

And I know another thing somebody mentioned is like, do you leave a long tail or do you use a new piece of yarn to attach pieces. And I typically do always on the safe side, leave a long tail at the end of my piece. That way I don’t have to reattach a new yarn. Yeah, me too. Yeah, it makes it so much easier that way.

Brittany: 27:48
So that sounds like it’s a good example when you’re maybe attaching a limb to an open, like to presumably the body that has an opening. Would the rules change if you were sewing a limb onto… a part that isn’t an opening, like say you’re doing a leg for a horse or something like that, and you’ve already got the whole body crocheted, but you want to attach the leg and you don’t have an opening there. Do you have any other recommendations for that?

Stephanie: 28:15
Yeah, it can be tricky. Yeah, exactly. When you’re sewing an open piece to a closed piece. But I just try. I know some people like to use pins to really hold it in place. And you just have to learn really how to grab the stitches from the body just to try it. And not to overextend your stitches so that the stitches are really visible. So try to keep it within the realm of the leg, if that makes sense.

Yeah, but honestly, it does take a lot of practice to… And I know there are some tutorials out there that I link to. I have an Ami Groomie for Beginners post, and I believe Planet June has a tutorial on how to, and she shows you how she likes to attach open pieces to closed pieces. So that can really help to see it in action.

Brittany: 29:01
Yeah. Okay, cool. The other thing that I was thinking of too, the bent needle, is it makes this part really, really easy. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. It makes it easier.

Stephanie: 29:11
Easier. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Totally.

Brittany: 29:13
Yeah. What about keeping it straight? Do you have any tips for it? I know. I always sew heads on just a tiny bit—

Stephanie: 29:21
crooked. I know. I know some people like to use pins to hold the pieces in place. We typically don’t. The only tip I have is just to constantly check your work, like after doing a few stitches. Mm-hmm. Look to see to see if your head has slightly tilted because if you just keep going and you’re like oh I’m on a roll I’m gonna keep stitching this on and then in the end it’s tilted there have been times where I’ve definitely had to undo my work because it totally shifted or it didn’t end up how I wanted so just after a couple of stitches check your work how is the head looking after a couple of stitches keep checking so that at the end you’re not surprised by how the final piece looks.

Brittany: 29:54
Yeah yeah that’s that’s great advice there I found that locking stitch markers work pretty well. I mean, if it’s a small piece, then maybe it’s not going to be as much because the stitch markers are kind of big and they do have a little bit of play. So it could still shift. But that’s that’s one way. Like for me, I I’m not big to use straight pins for that because I always.

Stephanie: 30:18
Yeah.

Brittany: 30:21
That’s good so what about the security of the limbs are you just kind of going like doing one pass or do you add a little bit more strength and like say for the head you’ll go around a second time after you’ve already completed the all of the stitches to sew it on?

Stephanie: 30:37
Sometimes I do do a second pass but typically I just go over it once but I just pick up stitches very close together so that I know it’s it’s quite secure. But I have to say I think there have been some arms and some ears where I have done two passes maybe.

Brittany: 30:52
Okay. Okay. That makes sense. I always try to think about the recipient too. I know if I’m making something for my niece, I sew a little bit extra to make sure that she doesn’t pull that off.

Stephanie: 31:03
Exactly. The wear and tear. Yeah.

Brittany: 31:05
Yeah. Yes. So that brings us into our next question. How do you know when you have enough stuffing?

Stephanie: 31:13
Yeah, this is another question that people frequently ask. It’s interesting because if you stuff too little, let’s say like the face or the body, it can deform or just collapse and it doesn’t have a nice squish to it. But then if you stuff too much, the stuffing can come out and it just may be too solid. So it definitely takes some time for you to see what you like as your personal preference for how much squish you want.

But you have to remember that stuffing will compress over time. So generally, I would say you want to stuff more than you think you need to. So typically what we do is say I’m working on the body. When I’m about to, when I’m nearing the end and the hole is getting quite small, we’ll stuff a large amount of stuffing into the body. And then when I’m about to close off the shape within the last few rounds for good, we’ll quickly stuff it again just to add even more stuffing.

And a tip that we were trying to think about is like for the head, it may be an indication that you’ve stuffed it too much if the backing of the safety eye is making the safety eye itself bulge or protrude out. So if you’re just like stuffing it like crazy, but then you see that the safety eye is actually kind of bulging out, that’s probably too much stuffing.

And another tip we were trying to think about is if you need to add more stuffing, generally it’s good to try adding more stuffing to the center instead of adding a bunch of little pieces to the sides because that can make your amigurumi look lumpy.

And let me see. Oh, yes. Sometimes it can be tricky stuffing little limbs like arms or a long tail. So you want to stuff it as you go. And it was funny because I noticed our fiberfill has a wooden stick, pretty much like a chopstick that comes with it. And at first I thought one of the girls put a chopstick in there. I was like, what is this doing in here? But it’s actually a tool that you can use to stuff your limb. And sometimes like if I’m not near that tool I’ll just use the back of my crochet hook and just stuff it as I go and really helps to to push it into little pieces it like yeah like arms or or tails.

Brittany: 33:17
Yeah yeah that’s definitely a challenge too. I’ve also been for leaving some things unstuffed if it’s like yeah it’s just one round of six single crochet that’s that’s super small yes you get you get a nice, good, flexible, but still sturdy limb if you leave it unstuffed.

Stephanie: 33:36
Yeah. And like oftentimes ears, you don’t need to stuff. There are definitely times when I say like, do not stuff. You just leave it as it is.

Brittany: 33:42
Yeah. That makes sense. I think that one pairs with the first one where people were asking about how do you get fewer holes?

Stephanie: 33:50
Exactly.

Brittany: 33:51
If you have issues with both of these, then it’s going to be really visible. But I think also if you have an issue with one of these, you’re still going to have some holes in your work where it’s still not gonna look maybe like it does in the picture or how you want it to.

Stephanie: 34:09
Exactly. And I just wanted to share an interesting story, too, because the very first Amigurumi I made as an adult was a Jigglypuff. And I remember finding the pattern online, and I thought it was so cute. I happened to have some pink yarn from my childhood, so I just went and crocheted it. But I didn’t have any fiberfill, and we didn’t have time to go to the store, so I just used some Kleenex as the stuffing. So I just stuffed it, and I was so excited. But now we know we can never wash that Jigglypuff. It has a very different squish than your typical fiberfill bit.

Brittany: 34:39
Yeah. Oh, and that brings up another question too, that it wasn’t perhaps listed here, but something that I did in the early days, one of my, actually my first amigurumi piece, I wanted it to be able to sit and have like a little bit of weight to the body. But I didn’t, same thing, didn’t have time to go to the store or just too excited. I’m not really sure which one it was. I didn’t want to wait to get those little craft beads to put in the bottom. So I used white rice just for my pantry. And so I know, again, I can never wash that because it has rice in the bottom of it.

Stephanie: 35:16
That’s so funny. I know when you’re so excited, you just want to finish it. You just look around your house for items,

Brittany: 35:20
Right? Right, right. You just make it work. Exactly. That’s so funny. Okay. So probably the question that I am really, really interested to hear too, and so many others were very interested in your design process for Mickey Rumi. Can you touch on that?

Stephanie: 35:35
Yes, definitely. So when we have an idea for an amigurumi, we’ll always start out with a sketch. And Ryan is really good at sketching. So he’ll sketch out the design that we’re going for to show the general proportions, like is the head bigger than the body? How are the arms looking? Because we want to show the body positioning. So is our amigurumi going to be sitting down? Is he leaning to one side, perhaps lying down?

And once we have our general sketch in place, we try to break it down into its component shapes. So we’ll identify like what spheres do we need to make? Are there any ovals, any tubes, maybe triangular ears?

So once we’ve kind of broken down the components into the shapes, we figure out what type of yarn we want to use, what color. And then this begins the hardest part, the trial and error process of trying to figure out the shapes. So I try to figure out: Does it need to be even increases? Is it going to be a sphere? Or perhaps do I need to stack more increases on one side? Maybe if I’m trying to make a protruding belly, I’ll have to stack the increases on one side more.

And what I generally like to do is use a stitch marker to indicate the point at which I was happy with the shape. So let’s just say I’m making a belly and I’m happy with the first three rounds. So I’ll put a stitch marker there and then I start experimenting. So sometimes I need to put maybe three increases on one side. Maybe the next round will be five increases. But if I see that the shape is not looking like how I want it to look, I can then frog my work up until that stitch marker because I remember that’s the point at which I was happy.

And another tip that I think is really neat that we do is sometimes we actually draw out the shape that we want onto a piece of paper. So for example if we were doing a dog ear where it’s round on one end but then tapered on the other end, we’ll actually draw out the actual size that we want on a piece of paper so that when I’m working on it I can actually measure it out, compare it by placing it onto the piece of paper and then I can see like oh I need to increase more rapidly or this ear is turning out way too big. I need it to be this small.

So it’s nice to have that guide for myself on that piece of paper. And we generally start with the head first. And then when we’re happy with the head, then we’ll go on to the body and then the limbs. So that’s our general design process.

And it definitely does take a lot of—it took me a long time. I would follow other people’s patterns to get used to general shapes like how to do spheres, how to do ovals by crocheting around a foundation chain, and how to—like if you increase more rapidly, this is how it’s going to look. If you decrease really sharply, this is how it’s going to look.

So it just took a lot of practice and working through other people’s patterns before I got comfortable with figuring out the shapes myself.

Brittany: 38:19
yeah yeah I love how you said it it just takes trial and error because that really is that really is the the moral of the story I’m I like how you mentioned that the increasing doesn’t necessarily have to be symmetrical so like if you’re trying to make a round belly it might be one might think that okay well I’m just still going to increase the way that I’m supposed to increase because I know it’ll work out and when you I’m curious when you shift those increases maybe to the front of the bear, whatever it is that you’re making the big belly for, do you still increase the same on the backside? Or are you taking the same number of increases? Like say you’re supposed to have 10 increases for one round. Are you stacking all 10 of those up to the front? Or are you… just taking like a portion of them and still increasing on the back does that make sense

Stephanie: 39:12
yeah yes yes that’s the tricky part so sometimes I will because you know how typically many crochet patterns it’s like you increase by six so like six twelve twenty four sometimes I won’t increase by that amount so I’ll increase maybe even more just say if I or I’ll stack all six let’s say to the front and then I might even decrease at the back depending it’s a lot of trial and error just trying to figure out sometimes I want to maybe eight increases and then no decreases. So it’s, it really is a lot of just trying it out and not being afraid to make mistakes and frog your work and just realizing that it’s all part of the process. You’re not going to get it perfect the first time. And with each time that you fail, you’re going to remember that the next time when you’re trying to make a similar shape and be like, Oh, I think I remember I did this for the belly last time. And I think I put too many increases on this side. So I’m going to try it less. And, uh, Yeah, it just takes a lot of patience.

Brittany: 40:09
It does. And I think, too, realizing that when you’re designing something, you’re creating the roadmap for that thing. You don’t have to fit yourself into some other box that says, I have to increase at this time, at this place, and in this increment. You just do what you need to do

Stephanie: 40:25
to get the shape that you want. Exactly. And then the really important thing is also like writing down what you’re doing. Because if you’re just doing this all in your head and you think you’ll remember it later, you definitely don’t. So I have my notebook right there. And there are so many times where I’ll write down what I just did and it doesn’t work. So I’ll just exit out. And there are so many patterns where it’s just like so many X’s, but you can see all the trial and error that was involved. So definitely if you’re designing it from scratch, have your pen and paper ready so that you can write down where the increases are. Because shifting your increases, like if it just is off by one stitch, it can really make, like instead of a protruding belly, you might have, I don’t know, protrusions on both sides or something like that. So if you want it to be replicable and you want people to be able to follow your pattern, you have to take very clear notes.

Brittany: 41:09
Yes, I second that. And I think that’s why so many people love to follow your patterns is that you guys are very meticulous in your note-taking. So definitely kudos to you guys for that extra work.

Stephanie: 41:20
Thank you.

Brittany: 41:21
All right, so… Faces. Faces are another thing that a lot of people struggle with and a lot of people asked about when we reached out on social. So how do you have any tips for embroidering faces?

Stephanie: 41:34
Yeah, so first off, I wanted to talk about safety eyes. And again, this is personal preference of where you want to place your eyes. But generally, we like to follow the rule of thirds, kind of like in photography, but we tend to place our eyes in the bottom third of the face. And then we like to put the nose first. in between, but slightly lower than the eyes. And in my patterns, I now like to place safety eyes between rounds 10 and 11, about six stitches apart. Because before I didn’t do that, but then people would start emailing and asking like, where exactly did you put the eyes? So now I really try to put it in the pattern so that people know where we put it. You can follow that or you can do your own thing. And I do have an amigurumi nose tutorial on my blog where I try to talk about how we stitch noses onto the face because it it definitely does require patience as well because it really affects how your overall amigurumi looks depending on what type of nose you do like if it’s a downturn nose sometimes your teddy might look a little bit sadder maybe that’s the look you want but then if he has an upturn nose he looks like he’s smiling and you could stitch the nose directly onto the face or you could also stitch it onto a felt circle and then glue that felt circle onto the face but um Yeah, I think we’re going to try to add more tutorials for stitching on faces since I know this is a common question that people have.

Brittany: 42:59
Yeah, I found that I got better with it over time and just with practice. But I’ll be honest, anytime I have to embroider a face, I cringe a little bit because I know that I’m a perfectionist at heart. And I might make, well, I’ll take this one for example. I did a big floppy crochet unicorn. a couple of months ago for my niece and my sister requested no safety eyes and so I’m like okay don’t criticize me if her face is not perfect so I made the first eye and it’s so beautiful and I was like yes it’s perfect and then I tried doing the other one and I I redid that second eye probably five or six times before I finally settled in on something that I thought looked very close to the first one. Yeah. But it’s still not perfect. And I think recognizing that when you embroider two eyes, you’re a real pro if you can get it to look exactly

Stephanie: 43:57
the same. It’s so funny how hard it is to replicate something like that sometimes. You’re like, I did it once before. Why is it so challenging the second time?

Brittany: 44:05
I know. I know. And it’s funny because the first time I did it, I was filming. So I literally had a video record of it and I still couldn’t duplicate it. So that’s interesting. And that’s just something I had to realize for myself and know that it’s a little bit more. I mean, it’s not permanent. Obviously, you can cut it out, but it feels more permanent than, say, if I’m cutting a piece of felt and I can hold it up and just pull it down. I don’t like it. That’s true. You can cut through whatever you’ve embroidered and pull all of those pieces out and try again.

Stephanie: 44:38
That’s true.

Brittany: 44:38
Yeah, can always try again. All right. So we talked about this a little bit at the very beginning when we were talking about your dogs. How do you make Fuzzy and Mikirumi?

Stephanie: 44:48
Oh, yes. So there are two ways that we have tried to make Fuzzy Amigurumi. The first way is working with novelty or eyelash yarn. So that’s the yarn that has little strands sticking out of it. And it’s definitely challenging, especially if you’re a beginner. So I would not recommend working with eyelash yarn if you’re first starting out. Because you can’t see the stitches, you can’t see where the front and back loops are easily. That can be tricky because you really need to feel for the next stitches. You need to insert your crochet hook kind of like by face. that try to feel where that gap is. And typically, like as a tip, I definitely use a stitch marker to indicate the beginning of the round. And this gives me a general guide. So let’s say if I have 24 stitches in a round, my stitch markers on the first stitch, I know that halfway across that circle that I should be at 12 stitches. And this kind of helps me guide along as I’m counting like, okay, so this should be 12, this should be 18. Okay, I’m at 24. And I know some people like to use a thinner yarn with the eyelash yarn. So maybe they’ll put like a really thin cotton. So that way there’s some indication of where the next stitch is. So that’s a tip if you want to really want to try working with eyelash yarn, but you can’t see the stitches, you could add another yarn. So hold two yarns together.

And the second way is the way that we were talking about before with the Chinese new year dogs where you’re fuzzing up normal yarn with a dog’s slicker brush and what’s interesting is that I kind of assumed at the beginning that you would need to work with yarn that had a natural fiber to it in order for it to be agitated like wool or maybe alpaca but we actually were successful in agitating a 100% acrylic yarn too because some people have asked like what yarn works for those dogs and the thing is you really need to try it out for yourself so you would have to buy the yarn that you’re thinking of definitely do a swatch and then just try fuzzing out that swatch to see because I know that not all 100% acrylic yarns will work and I’m sure that they all have kind of slightly different fuzzes you just kind of have to try it out to see if you can achieve the fuzz that you want

Brittany: 46:51
yeah what yarn did you use for that dog if you don’t mind me asking

Stephanie: 46:54
Yeah, yeah, for sure. I used, for the first one, I used Vanna’s Compliment and it actually already kind of had a halo or fuzz to it. That’s how we kind of knew that it would probably fuzz up well. But what’s interesting is that after I completely, like we designed the dog, crocheted it, we found out that that yarn is being discontinued. So that was really hard to know that people wouldn’t be able to find the exact same yarn. So then we made a second dog and we used New Basic 175, which is an acrylic wool blend. So that one did have a wool component. So those are the two that we know for sure will fuzz up. But sometimes that may be hard for people to find elsewhere. So you can just kind of you have to try it out yourself.

Brittany: 47:34
Yeah, I’m curious. I know the new basic is like a roving style yarn or it’s not. Yeah, it’s just one was the was the Vanna’s. Was that one applied yarn? Yes, that one was applied yarn. OK, that’s good to know, because I would think that. because roving yarn is just one ply, like basically twisted into the piece of yarn, that you could maybe get carried away with it. That’s true. And it could potentially, you know, you could potentially create a hole in it, but it doesn’t sound like that happened to you. So you were able to prove the concept on both applied and an unplied yarn.

Stephanie: 48:06
Yeah, yeah, that’s true. You were.

Brittany: 48:09
The other thing I wanted to bring up too, jumping back to the novelty, like fuzzy eyelash yarn, is that It’s sort of like a double-edged sword because it is so difficult to see your stitches and to count and all of those things. The good thing about it is that when you make a mistake, and I’m going to say when because you probably will for sure, you can’t see it. So it’s okay. As long as you’re not dropping stitches continuously or adding too many stitches, then you’re not really going to see it unless you just skip one stitch or… You know, it’s not typically the end of the world. You can usually come back from little hiccups with that type of yarn. Exactly.

Stephanie: 48:51
That’s so true. Yeah. The eyelash yarn is very forgiving because you can’t see the stitches exactly. If you miss out one stitch on one round, people are not going to notice.

Brittany: 48:59
Yeah. And I wonder too, when you’re using the slicker brush method, it seems like if you had any imperfections that the fuzzing of that would kind of cover those up too. And maybe if you had any holes in your work that like for those decreases, does it kind of cover those up too?

Brittany: 38:19
yeah yeah I love how you said it it just takes trial and error because that really is that really is the the moral of the story I’m I like how you mentioned that the increasing doesn’t necessarily have to be symmetrical so like if you’re trying to make a round belly it might be one might think that okay well I’m just still going to increase the way that I’m supposed to increase because I know it’ll work out and when you I’m curious when you shift those increases maybe to the front of the bear, whatever it is that you’re making the big belly for, do you still increase the same on the backside? Or are you taking the same number of increases? Like say you’re supposed to have 10 increases for one round. Are you stacking all 10 of those up to the front? Or are you… just taking like a portion of them and still increasing on the back does that make sense

Stephanie: 39:12
yeah yes yes that’s the tricky part so sometimes I will because you know how typically many crochet patterns it’s like you increase by six so like six twelve twenty four sometimes I won’t increase by that amount so I’ll increase maybe even more just say if I or I’ll stack all six let’s say to the front and then I might even decrease at the back depending it’s a lot of trial and error just trying to figure out sometimes I want to maybe eight increases and then no decreases. So it’s, it really is a lot of just trying it out and not being afraid to make mistakes and frog your work and just realizing that it’s all part of the process. You’re not going to get it perfect the first time. And with each time that you fail, you’re going to remember that the next time when you’re trying to make a similar shape and be like, Oh, I think I remember I did this for the belly last time. And I think I put too many increases on this side. So I’m going to try it less. And, uh, Yeah, it just takes a lot of patience.

Brittany: 40:09
It does. And I think, too, realizing that when you’re designing something, you’re creating the roadmap for that thing. You don’t have to fit yourself into some other box that says, I have to increase at this time, at this place, and in this increment. You just do what you need to do

Stephanie: 40:25
to get the shape that you want. Exactly. And then the really important thing is also like writing down what you’re doing. Because if you’re just doing this all in your head and you think you’ll remember it later, you definitely don’t. So I have my notebook right there. And there are so many times where I’ll write down what I just did and it doesn’t work. So I’ll just exit out. And there are so many patterns where it’s just like so many X’s, but you can see all the trial and error that was involved. So definitely if you’re designing it from scratch, have your pen and paper ready so that you can write down where the increases are. Because shifting your increases, like if it just is off by one stitch, it can really make, like instead of a protruding belly, you might have, I don’t know, protrusions on both sides or something like that. So if you want it to be replicable and you want people to be able to follow your pattern, you have to take very clear notes.

Brittany: 41:09
Yes, I second that. And I think that’s why so many people love to follow your patterns is that you guys are very meticulous in your note-taking. So definitely kudos to you guys for that extra work.

Stephanie: 41:20
Thank you.

Brittany: 41:21
All right, so… Faces. Faces are another thing that a lot of people struggle with and a lot of people asked about when we reached out on social. So how do you have any tips for embroidering faces?

Stephanie: 41:34
Yeah, so first off, I wanted to talk about safety eyes. And again, this is personal preference of where you want to place your eyes. But generally, we like to follow the rule of thirds, kind of like in photography, but we tend to place our eyes in the bottom third of the face. And then we like to put the nose first. in between, but slightly lower than the eyes. And in my patterns, I now like to place safety eyes between rounds 10 and 11, about six stitches apart. Because before I didn’t do that, but then people would start emailing and asking like, where exactly did you put the eyes? So now I really try to put it in the pattern so that people know where we put it. You can follow that or you can do your own thing. And I do have an amigurumi nose tutorial on my blog where I try to talk about how we stitch noses onto the face because it it definitely does require patience as well because it really affects how your overall amigurumi looks depending on what type of nose you do like if it’s a downturn nose sometimes your teddy might look a little bit sadder maybe that’s the look you want but then if he has an upturn nose he looks like he’s smiling and you could stitch the nose directly onto the face or you could also stitch it onto a felt circle and then glue that felt circle onto the face but um Yeah, I think we’re going to try to add more tutorials for stitching on faces since I know this is a common question that people have.

Brittany: 42:59
Yeah, I found that I got better with it over time and just with practice. But I’ll be honest, anytime I have to embroider a face, I cringe a little bit because I know that I’m a perfectionist at heart. And I might make, well, I’ll take this one for example. I did a big floppy crochet unicorn. a couple of months ago for my niece and my sister requested no safety eyes and so I’m like okay don’t criticize me if her face is not perfect so I made the first eye and it’s so beautiful and I was like yes it’s perfect and then I tried doing the other one and I I redid that second eye probably five or six times before I finally settled in on something that I thought looked very close to the first one. Yeah. But it’s still not perfect. And I think recognizing that when you embroider two eyes, you’re a real pro if you can get it to look exactly

Stephanie: 43:57
the same. It’s so funny how hard it is to replicate something like that sometimes. You’re like, I did it once before. Why is it so challenging the second time?

Brittany: 44:05
I know. I know. And it’s funny because the first time I did it, I was filming. So I literally had a video record of it and I still couldn’t duplicate it. So that’s interesting. And that’s just something I had to realize for myself and know that it’s a little bit more. I mean, it’s not permanent. Obviously, you can cut it out, but it feels more permanent than, say, if I’m cutting a piece of felt and I can hold it up and just pull it down. I don’t like it. That’s true. You can cut through whatever you’ve embroidered and pull all of those pieces out and try again.

Stephanie: 44:38
That’s true.

Brittany: 44:38
Yeah, can always try again. All right. So we talked about this a little bit at the very beginning when we were talking about your dogs. How do you make Fuzzy and Mikirumi?

Stephanie: 44:48
Oh, yes. So there are two ways that we have tried to make Fuzzy Amigurumi. The first way is working with novelty or eyelash yarn. So that’s the yarn that has little strands sticking out of it. And it’s definitely challenging, especially if you’re a beginner. So I would not recommend working with eyelash yarn if you’re first starting out. Because you can’t see the stitches, you can’t see where the front and back loops are easily. That can be tricky because you really need to feel for the next stitches. You need to insert your crochet hook kind of like by face. that try to feel where that gap is. And typically, like as a tip, I definitely use a stitch marker to indicate the beginning of the round. And this gives me a general guide. So let’s say if I have 24 stitches in a round, my stitch markers on the first stitch, I know that halfway across that circle that I should be at 12 stitches. And this kind of helps me guide along as I’m counting like, okay, so this should be 12, this should be 18. Okay, I’m at 24. And I know some people like to use a thinner yarn with the eyelash yarn. So maybe they’ll put like a really thin cotton. So that way there’s some indication of where the next stitch is. So that’s a tip if you want to really want to try working with eyelash yarn, but you can’t see the stitches, you could add another yarn. So hold two yarns together.

And the second way is the way that we were talking about before with the Chinese new year dogs where you’re fuzzing up normal yarn with a dog’s slicker brush and what’s interesting is that I kind of assumed at the beginning that you would need to work with yarn that had a natural fiber to it in order for it to be agitated like wool or maybe alpaca but we actually were successful in agitating a 100% acrylic yarn too because some people have asked like what yarn works for those dogs and the thing is you really need to try it out for yourself so you would have to buy the yarn that you’re thinking of definitely do a swatch and then just try fuzzing out that swatch to see because I know that not all 100% acrylic yarns will work and I’m sure that they all have kind of slightly different fuzzes you just kind of have to try it out to see if you can achieve the fuzz that you want

Brittany: 46:51
yeah what yarn did you use for that dog if you don’t mind me asking

Stephanie: 46:54
Yeah, yeah, for sure. I used, for the first one, I used Vanna’s Compliment and it actually already kind of had a halo or fuzz to it. That’s how we kind of knew that it would probably fuzz up well. But what’s interesting is that after I completely, like we designed the dog, crocheted it, we found out that that yarn is being discontinued. So that was really hard to know that people wouldn’t be able to find the exact same yarn. So then we made a second dog and we used New Basic 175, which is an acrylic wool blend. So that one did have a wool component. So those are the two that we know for sure will fuzz up. But sometimes that may be hard for people to find elsewhere. So you can just kind of you have to try it out yourself.

Brittany: 47:34
Yeah, I’m curious. I know the new basic is like a roving style yarn or it’s not. Yeah, it’s just one was the was the Vanna’s. Was that one applied yarn? Yes, that one was applied yarn. OK, that’s good to know, because I would think that. because roving yarn is just one ply, like basically twisted into the piece of yarn, that you could maybe get carried away with it. That’s true. And it could potentially, you know, you could potentially create a hole in it, but it doesn’t sound like that happened to you. So you were able to prove the concept on both applied and an unplied yarn.

Stephanie: 48:06
Yeah, yeah, that’s true. You were.

Brittany: 48:09
The other thing I wanted to bring up too, jumping back to the novelty, like fuzzy eyelash yarn, is that It’s sort of like a double-edged sword because it is so difficult to see your stitches and to count and all of those things. The good thing about it is that when you make a mistake, and I’m going to say when because you probably will for sure, you can’t see it. So it’s okay. As long as you’re not dropping stitches continuously or adding too many stitches, then you’re not really going to see it unless you just skip one stitch or… You know, it’s not typically the end of the world. You can usually come back from little hiccups with that type of yarn. Exactly.

Stephanie: 48:51
That’s so true. Yeah. The eyelash yarn is very forgiving because you can’t see the stitches exactly. If you miss out one stitch on one round, people are not going to notice.

Brittany: 48:59
Yeah. And I wonder too, when you’re using the slicker brush method, it seems like if you had any imperfections that the fuzzing of that would kind of cover those up too. And maybe if you had any holes in your work that like for those decreases, does it kind of cover those up too?

Stephanie: 49:18
That’s true. It is really neat to see how the stitches really melt away and it just gets kind of glazed over with that fur. So definitely, yeah, I think it would.

Brittany: 49:27
Yeah. I’m curious, have you tried washing any amigurumi with like either the novelty yarn or where you use the slicker brush?

Stephanie: 49:37
You know what? We haven’t. So I, yeah. That’d be a good experiment. I can’t speak about that. That would be actually. I should do it. We do have some test swatches. We could throw that into the wash.

Brittany: 49:46
Yeah. Yeah. I would be curious to see if it holds up. Now, for me personally, whenever I make a piece, unless I’m making it for a niece or a nephew, if it’s just for me, honestly, I don’t wash them because they kind of just sit in the studio and they just make me happy.

Stephanie: 50:05
Me too. And I don’t even worry about that.

Brittany: 50:05
I think it would be interesting to find out if the washer would just completely change the look of those yarns.

Stephanie: 50:13
That’s true.

Brittany: 50:13
So now a lot of people were interested in learning who some of your favorite amigurumi designers are.

Stephanie: 50:21
Yeah, so I have been blogging for seven years now. And back when I first started, I was really inspired by many Amigurumi artists out there. So I bought every single book by Anna Paola Rimoli because her designs were so cute. They were so kawaii. And I poured through her books and made so many of her designs. They were very simple shapes. And the way she embroidered faces was so cute. So I was very much inspired by her.

And there were also two artists named Papika and Wolf Dreamer Off the Hook, who provided free patterns online. So that was a really great resource for me when I was first starting out as an adult, just following their patterns. I really like their cute designs.

And nowadays, I’m really inspired by Little Aqua Girl and Petite Teenie on Instagram. They’re a mother-daughter duo from Australia. And they just make such beautiful designs, their color choice, the way they shape their items. And it’s really neat because they combine crochet with knitting and sewing. So there’s different components. Yeah, so they have sewn dresses or maybe a portion like a hat could be knitted or something like that. And the way they style and photograph their amigurumi is really adorable. So I always look forward to seeing their posts.

I also love May of Amigurumi. She’s the author of Hello Kitty Crochet. And she just has a really cute style. Her amigurumi are smaller. And the way also she photographs her amigurumi is adorable.

And there’s also Holly of Storyland Ami, who started off making smaller Amigurumi, but now she’s been diving into extreme Amigurumi. So she has the giant sloth and a giant bunny, and it’s really neat to see Amigurumi on such a large scale. So she uses a jumbo crochet hook, huge yarn, and it’s really neat to see her holding her extreme Amigurumi. So that’s really cool.

And the last person I wanted to mention is Jillian of Spin A Yarn Crochet. She’s from Newfoundland, so she’s a Canadian. And I really admire her style. She kind of has these rag dolls that are very popular. So it’s interesting because she’ll crochet two sides that are worked in turned rows, like two flat shapes, and then crochet them together. So her amigurumi are still three-dimensional, but they have a 2D look to them. And yeah, she has like a llama-like. She recently released a butterfly that was really pretty. So I really look forward to seeing her posts too. I think her style is very unique and identifiable. It’s really neat discovering lots of people. Most of these people I found through Instagram as well. Yeah,

Brittany: 52:59
Instagram is definitely a great outlet for our craft and being able to find people who inspire us.

Stephanie: 53:07
Exactly. It’s nice that anybody can post pictures and we can discover anybody around the world. It’s really

Brittany: 53:12
awesome. It is. Now, I love to give people an action plan. And conveniently, this last question here that everybody was really curious to find out is how do you get started with the amigurumi?

Stephanie: 53:25
Yeah, I know a lot of people who have been crocheting for years or maybe they don’t know how to crochet, but they are so inspired to learn because they want to learn how to make amigurumi. So I would highly recommend that you learn how to single crochet because that’s pretty much the stitch that you use for most amigurumi and then learn how to single crochet in a round, because that is a different story just from working in turned rows versus in a round.

And I actually have a post called Amigurumi for Beginners in which I walk you through, you know, how to do the magic circle, how to do the invisible decrease, and how to read patterns. Because I think learning those skills early on will help you so much if you know how to do the magic circle and do the invisible decrease early on.

And I know a lot of people have actually tackled Amigurumi as their first crochet projects and they’ve been successful. You just need to be patient, practice making circles, and practice. I would recommend, I have a pattern called Teddy Ornaments, which is essentially just one ball. So that’s a good first project because you’re just learning how to work one ball. And then there’s a little scarf you can tie around him. And then you just do two little balls for the ears. So yeah, I tried to condense all that information into that Amigurumi for Beginners post. And yeah. Once you learn how to read patterns, it’s amazing because the sky’s the limit as to what you can create after that. There are so many free Amigurumi patterns out there, also paid Amigurumi patterns. But once you kind of dive into that world, there’s so much you can do.

Brittany: 54:53
Yeah, and books too.

Stephanie: 54:54
And books, yes, yes.

Brittany: 54:55
Yeah, yeah. I definitely echo the importance of learning how to read a pattern because like you said, once you do, then it opens up an infinite world of possibilities, right? That’s cool. Thank you for sharing all of that with us. There was sort of a reason why I saved that question for last, because I know you have some great resources to get people started. So once again, I will have all of that linked in the show notes page. Before we end, can you give people a glimpse of where they can find you online? Yeah, my

Stephanie: 55:29
Instagram handle is allaboutami. So A-L-L-A-B-O-U-T-A-M-I. I do love Instagram and my blog has all my designs and tutorials. I’m also on Facebook and Twitter, Pinterest, and I have an Etsy shop too in case you want to purchase a concise version of my patterns. But yeah, I love hearing from people and seeing their pictures after they follow my patterns. So you can find me there.

Brittany: 55:56
And that’s awesome. And the majority of your patterns — Patterns, correct me if I’m wrong — are free on your blog.

Stephanie: 56:01
Yes, they are all free.

Brittany: 56:03
So that’s awesome. We definitely appreciate all the hard work and time that goes into creating those resources for people and definitely encourage those to purchase the concise version on your Etsy shop too if they need some additional instruction and just for the support. So that’s cool that you give people that chance too. Thank you. Well, Stephanie, it has been an absolute pleasure having you here today. Thank you so much for answering all of these questions. You just, again, knocked my socks off. You answered the questions as they were coming up in my mind. And so I know that you have helped so many people through this process.

Stephanie: 56:39
Well, thank you so much for having me, Brittany. It’s been awesome chatting.

Brittany: 56:43
All right, I hope you enjoyed that episode here with Stephanie from All About Ami and the new format we were testing out. If this is something you really enjoy, go ahead and tell me about it on the show notes page for this episode. You can access that at bhookedcrochet.com/session069. That’s also where you’ll find the resources that Stephanie mentioned. Thank you again, Stephanie, so much for sharing your wisdom with us today, for answering so many of those questions and for preparing all of those resources that we can tap into to help answer our questions. So you can find all of those resources once again at BHookedCrochet.com/session069. I will link out to all of the resources, the tutorials, and the patterns that we talked about today in our chat so you can have easy access to those whenever you’re ready.

And before I bid you farewell today, I want to take another moment to thank Annie’s for sponsoring the show and also for creating the Hook and Needle Club. It’s been something that is just so nice. It’s such a nice thing to be able to have a project arrive at your door, have everything that you need, the yarn, the pattern, everything. easy to follow, a knit, a crochet version for those of us who are bi-stitual or one or the other. So we always have a project to work on that we can deem our own, our own personal project.

I know that really is a struggle for designers to still be able to enjoy their hobby, but also make that separation between work and fun. So Annie’s Hook and Needle Club has definitely done that for me this month. I’m working on that Sedona shawl. And if you haven’t seen it, oh man, you need to have a look at it. Check me out on my Instagram feed. You can see the yarn that I’m working with for the Sedona shawl. It’s gorgeous. It’s one of those beautiful roving with long sweeping colorways of pinks and greens and purples. really a color combination I wouldn’t have thought to put together, but I am just loving the way it works up.

So you can check me out on Instagram at bhooked, B-H-O-O-K-E-D. And if you want to join Annie’s Hook and Needle Club today, you can do so at annieskitclubs.com slash bhooked. Thank you so much for your time and attention today. I appreciate you more than you can ever know. It’s such a pleasure to sit down with you week after week and talk about something that we both love so much. So you can bet that I will be back at you next week, same time, same place. Have a wonderful weekend as always, and I will see you next week. Bye-bye.