#crochet tips

1: The Standard Way

First, as a baseline, here's your standard method that gets you the stripy texture. Single crochet along the row, chain and turn, single crochet along again, repeat. Simple to do, but because the single crochet rows are happening on opposite sides of the piece - the front, then the back - each alternate row looks different and gives you that stripy appearance.

In order to fix this, we need to make it so that the single crochet isn't happening on opposite sides each row? What if we could always crochet from the front - the "right side" of the piece?

2: Purlwise Crochet (or back-to-front crochet)

If you do knitting as well, you might already realise what I mean by calling this "purlwise". Purling is such a basic technique in knitting that perhaps you've even wondered why standard crochet doesn't have an equivalent type of stitch!

If you don't knit and have no idea what "purl" means, don't worry. It's a simple idea, and "back-to-front" about sums it up. You hold your yarn at the front of the work, and then insert your hook from the back, to the front. Pull up a loop like that - it'll end up on the back - and then pull another loop through those two to finish the single crochet. Here's a video to illustrate it better:

It's tricky to get the hang of at first, but with practice you can build up the muscle memory to do it a lot more smoothly!

When crocheting a flat piece using this technique, you'll want to alternate rows of regular single crochet and back-to-front/purlwise crochet. This way, while you are turning the work, you're always working the stitch from the "right side" of the piece, and the texture is much smoother!

(Alternatively, if you can crochet ambidextrously, you can flex on all of us non-ambidextrous people by not even needing to turn the piece and work purlwise at all. Just crochet from right to left with the hook in your right hand, chain, then move the hook to your left hand and crochet the next row from left to right. Simple!)

(As a non-ambidextrous person, though, I do find getting the hang of purlwise crochet easier than trying to teach my non-dominant hand to use the hook.)

With all that said, although this method looks a lot more similar, it's still not exactly the same as the texture of a 3D in-the-round piece. The stitches, while worked from the same side, are still pointing in opposite directions every row, and that makes it look a little different.

3: Moving the Starting Point

If we want things to look exactly the same as a piece made in the round, we can't work our rows back and forth. We have to work each row in the same direction - and since this is a flat piece, it means we have to move the starting point. After working one row of single crochet, we need to make it so that our active loop ends up back on the side we started on (the right if right-handed, or the left if left-handed). There's a couple of ways to do this:

Tying off The most straightforward way is to tie off your yarn every row, and reattach with a slipknot and standing single crochet at the new starting point. You could do this by cutting the yarn, but it's also possible to tie off your yarn without cutting it. If you pull the loop large enough to fit the entire piece through it, you can tie it off that way (shown below).

I prefer to do this because it means that if I need to frog and redo, I don't have multiple separate pieces of yarn to work with. Tying off like this does still make frogging more annoying, however, as you need to manually untie each knot, every row.

Chaining across If you want frogging to be less annoying, there's another way to move the starting point. Rather than tying the yarn off, you can simply make a chain long enough to reach back to the starting point without bending the piece.

Of course, this means that there will be a bulky chain hanging out at the back of your work, which will be more annoying to undo and weave in when you're done. But depending on where and how you want to use this flat piece in your amigurumi, there could be times when the chains will just end up inside of a 3D space that will get filled with stuffing anyway, and you won't need to worry about the extra bulk they add at all. That's what this method is best used for.

Whichever way we go about moving the starting point, the resulting piece will have a texture exactly the same as a 3D piece made in the round. The downsides are that, because we're crocheting in the same direction every row, the piece will be susceptible to drift just like when working in the round. The edges are also less neat and may stretch out a bit, because they don't have the chains holding each row together like you get when you chain and turn.

And of course, the back is a mess and will need to be cleaned up or hidden one way or another. Here's the back of my example piece, showing the results of both tying off (top) and chaining across (bottom).

So, to summarise each method and their pros and cons:

1: The standard way

Pros - Simple to crochet - No drift - No loose ends

Cons - Very noticeable stripy texture

2: Purlwise crochet

Pros - Much more similar texture to scs in the round - No drift - No loose ends

Cons - Tricky to crochet purlwise; will take time to get the hang of - Still not exactly the same texture as scs in the round

3: Moving the starting point

Pros - Simple enough to crochet - Exactly the same texture as scs in the round

Cons - Susceptible to drift - Sides less neat - Chaining across adds bulk; need to hide the chains inside a 3D shape - Tying off makes it annoying to frog, and many ends to weave in when finished

What you'll need:

Ruler or caliper (everything will be measured in millimeters)

Pencil

Graph or binder paper (you want something lined to help keep your measuring level)

Yarn

Stuffing

Crochet hook

Stitch marker

Calculator (optional)

Abbreviations and notation used in the spreadsheet (US terms) 

MR - magic ring

number by itself - single crochet (Ex: 6, inc = 6 sc, inc)

even - single crochet in each stitch in the round

inc - increase (2 single crochets in 1 stitch)

dec - decrease (1 single crochet across 2 stitches - invisible decrease recommended)

() x number - repeat instructions inside parentheses by the number of repetitions listed

Step 1: Draw your shape!

The size of your drawing will be the approximate size of your finished piece! Your sketch will likely be slightly smaller than your piece once you've added stuffing.

Step 2: Find the width of your single crochet stitches

To calculate how many stitches you'll need in each round of your piece, you will need to find the average width of your single crochets.

This will vary based on your hook size, yarn, and tension. Different yarn brands / lines may produce slightly different stitch widths, even if they share the same yarn weight (e.g. worsted or size 4 yarn). 

To find your average stitch width, make a swatch or use a piece you've already made that uses the same yarn and hook size as you intend to use for this project. I recommend measuring the width of 5 single crochet stitches and dividing that number by 5. Include the decimal to the tenth place instead of rounding up to the nearest whole number, this will make a difference! 

Step 3: Patterning the first several rounds

When you open the spreadsheet, start by plugging in your stitch width in cell L2 (5.9 mm is a placeholder here).

To measure for your first round, take your ruler or caliper and use the stitch width value to make a vertical mark down the center of your shape. If your stitch width isn't a whole number, just make a mark using your best estimate, it doesn't need to be precise. Then, take a horizontal measurement and type in the value in cell B2.

If the spreadsheet gives you a stitch count of six or fewer for the first round, you can continue without modifying anything. However, if you get a number higher than 6, like in this example, you’ll want to crochet a few flat rounds to bulk out the shape first. 

To figure out how many extra rounds you’ll need, make a note of your first round's stitch count (cell C2) and head over to the other sheet called “Flat Circle.”

Compare the stitch count to the flat circle pattern in this sheet. You’ll want to crochet as many rounds as you need to get a stitch count equal to or within 6 stitches below to this one. In my example, the round count is 19 stitches, so I would crochet 3 flat rounds first, ending with 18 stitches.

Copy the diameter “measurements” you need and paste them into the “Rounds” sheet using “paste special” (Desktop: Ctrl + Shift + V (PC) or left click -> paste special  -> values only, Mobile: press and hold the cell and “paste special” should pop up).

If your first diameter's stitch count wasn't a multiple of 6, retype it into the next cell below the values you just pasted in, otherwise, do not add it again.

Now you have the first few rows of your shape! Things will get simpler from here.

Step 4: Building the middle of the shape

Turn your ruler vertically again, make another mark using your stitch width, and measure for the next diameter.

You can either crochet the rounds as you measure for each new diameter one at a time, or measure ahead of time. I prefer to build the pattern as I make the piece to make sure the sizing doesn’t get thrown off and because it’s easier to keep track of my progress. Every so often, I would recommend lining your piece up to the drawing and taking a bird’s eye view of it to see if your scaling is correct. If your piece looks significantly bigger than your drawing, consider increasing your stitch width value by a tenth of a decimal place (e.g. 5.9 -> 6.0). If it looks too small compared to your drawing, try reducing it by a tenth of a decimal place instead.

Note: The pattern formula will tack on "excess" single crochet stitches to the end of the instructions, like what is shown in the 5th round of the above example "( 2, inc ) x 5, 4 (24)." I wasn't able to figure out a way of distributing these stitches back into the rest of the pattern since it would require another step of dividing the pattern. I'm sure it's possible, but it's beyond my own math skills. I usually just add the excess single crochets as is, but that is something you could manually alter too.

Step 5: Finishing Off The Shape 

Note: If your shape is meant to be left open ended, such as a for a limb that will be sewn directly to the rest of the body, you can skip this section.

Like the inverse of the first few rounds of the piece, you may find the pattern formula suggesting you crochet more than six decreases inside a single round. For certain shapes, you may want to use that many decreases in a round for a flattening effect, however, if you want the shape to come to a rounded end, follow the instructions below. 

Revisit the flat circle spreadsheet and look at the decrease pattern (below the increase pattern). This time, you will disregard the stitch count of the last diameter measurement you made, and only consider the stitch count of the previous round (22 in my example). Start from whichever round will give you the number of stitches closest to, but still less than, your target stitch account. 

In the example, you would insert the pattern instructions beginning at a stitch count of 18. If your current stitch count is a multiple of six, you would start with a stitch count six below that number (e.g. if you had 24 stitches, you would also start with the instructions to give you 18 stitches for the next round). Copy paste the given diameter measurements into your "Rounds" sheet.

With this, you've completed the pattern for your piece!

Optional Tip: Staggering increases / decreases manually

The formula in this spreadsheet only tries to evenly distribute increases or decreases within the current round; it doesn’t change their placement based on the positions of those stitches in the previous round. Therefore, if you have a set of rounds that happen to be increasing / decreasing in the same spot in the round, it will begin to distort the shape as these stitches stack on top each other. You’ll most likely see this issue at the final stitch in the rounds, like in the illustrated example below:

How do you figure out where to place the increase / decrease stitches for your modified round? Personally, I just make a note of how many inc / dec stitches there are supposed to be in the round and eyeball their placement. Increases create a slight peak in your crochet work and decreases create a slight dip, which you can use as a visual guide. With this, you can manually avoid stacking these stitches on top of each other by keeping an eye on the previous round. But if you have trouble telling these stitches apart from your single crochets, you can also fix this manually by comparing your previous round to the current one and rewriting the instructions to redistribute the stitches. For instance, if you are crocheting a modified round that originally placed an increase at the very end of the round, you can place your increase halfway through the round instead. 

For this demo, I manually edited 3 rounds in total, shown highlighted here. It’s important to keep the number of increases or decreases needed for the round the same when you modify it, and you may want to consider keeping a calculator / calculator app on hand to make sure your stitches add up properly. Additionally, you can either copy paste your pattern into a separate document to rework it or make notes of the rewritten rounds within the spreadsheet itself.

Conclusion

And that's about it! I have other techniques I lean on that I might try to make tutorials for in the future, but I hope this can be of some use for others who want to design amigurumi.

I know I didn't go into detail on how the spreadsheet breaks things down, but here's an overview of what it's calculating:

Round diameter (input) -> radius -> circumference -> circumference / stitch width (input) -> total stitch count for the round -> pattern for evenly distributed increase or decrease stitches