amygurumi

[Note: This is the first in a series of tutorials for making amigurumi forms. I hope this will help you in designing your own patterns. Feedback welcome!]

Amigurumi projects often include even increases to form circles, balls or cylinders with spiral crochet. Often, you will be called upon to “increase evenly” to a certain number of stitches. Once you figure out how to do this, it’s very easy to calculate how to increase evenly for each round.

In this example, we’ll increase evenly by 6 each round from the beginning to 30 stitches.

Rnd 1 – Make double ring. Work 6 sc into ring.
Rnd 2 – 2 sc into each st around (12 sc).
Rnd 3 – [2 sc into next st; sc into next st] repeat around (18 sc).
Rnd 4 – [2 sc into next st; sc into next 2 sts] repeat around (24 sc).
Rnd 5 – [ 2 sc into next st; sc into next 3 sts] repeat around (30 sc).

As you can see, you will be placing the increases evenly by adding to the number of single crochet stitches between the increases with each round. An easy way to think about it is this: for each round, you’ll be counting by a multiple of 6. For round 5, count the increase (2 sc in first st) as “1, 2″. For the single crochets between the increases, count as “3, 4, 5″. Do this 6 times (5 * 6 = 30). Therefore, round 6 will be counted by 6 (2 sc into next st: “1,2″; sc into next 4 sts: “3, 4, 5, 6″) six times for a total of 36, etc. You can keep going this way to increase to the desired number of stitches.

You don’t have to begin with 6, though I’ve found many patterns do. Some people find multiples of 5 easier to work with. Keep in mind, however, that if you begin with a large number of stitches in the first round (10 or more) or you increase very quickly (5, 10, 20, 40, etc.), you may find that your circle begins to ripple and no longer lies flat.

Have fun counting stitches!

This entry was posted Friday, April 10, 2009 at 12:00 am and is filed under Tutorials. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.