Tunisian Amigurumi

By Rohn Strong

Combine Tunisian crochet with Amigurumi's and you've got a winning pattern book! This book includes 6 designs - a Whale, Tropical Fish, Tropical bird, Regal Blue Fish, Elephant, and Giraffe. Each toy is worked flat using Tunisian crochet and seamed invisibly using the mattress stitch. The toys are perfect for beginners, as they require very little knowledge over how to accomplish a single crochet stitch. The toys are all quite large at around 12 each using worsted weight yarn by Premier Yarns.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Annies
• Release date: Oct 1, 2015
• ISBN: 9781590123638

Book preview

Introduction

Do you love amigurumi as much as I do? It is actually how I started out designing! I would make these adorable little animals and sell them at craft fairs and online. Once I started designing professionally, I didn’t design my little animals anymore. Then one day I had the idea of combining Tunisian crochet with amigurumi!

Tunisian crochet is the perfect base for amigurumi. The stitches stretch, but not so much so that you see the stuffing through the fabric. And because it is a firm fabric, it will stand up to the toughest tots.

You really need to know only one stitch: Tunisian Simple Stitch. You’ll learn how to increase and decrease as we go along. That’s it! Refer to our Tunisian Basics on page 3 to learn the stitch and its variations, or as a refresher for rusty skills.

The amigurumi animals are constructed flat and then sewn together. This means you don’t need to have a special double-ended crochet hook or know any special skills, and in most cases you don’t even need a Tunisian crochet hook—a standard hook will work just fine.

And the best part? Each of the animals requires only one skein of yarn. Some do need small scraps of additional colors, but you should have those in your stash bin! Safety eyes are used for each toy, but if you plan on crocheting these animals for anyone younger than three years of age, try fabric paint or sewing on felt as a safer alternative. I stuffed each animal with polyester fiberfill but any type of filling can be used.

So grab your hook and yarn, and let's make some adorable animals!

—Rohn Strong

Tunisian Basics

Follow our simple step-by-step tips to easily master this technique.

Tunisian crochet is a type of crochet that is different from standard crochet techniques. Each row is worked in two steps: the forward pass and the return pass.

In step one, the forward pass, loops are picked up across the stitches in the previous row. The first vertical bar of the previous row is skipped because the loop on the hook counts