Amigurumi design 3 – no-sew amigurumi – Ugly bunnies

I hope you enjoyed our first two amigurumi design tutorials, where we learned how to calculate an amigurumi pattern, and how to add shaping to your amigurumi. Today, we’ll look at a couple of techniques for joining and splitting tubes, so that you can add limbs and appendages without sewing. If you want limbs to stick out at certain angles, or if you want ears that ‘pinch off’ at the base, then it may be better to make these pieces separately and sew them on afterwards. If you want limbs, ears, fingers, etc. to be continuous with the main body of your amigurumi, then splitting and joining tubes works well. You can of course mix and match techniques to get just the look you want.

Today’s ugly-bunny  is a bit of a mix-and-match, giving different options for body length and foot size, as well as two different ways of joining the ears. The larger bunny took approx 1 skein (78yds) of medium-weight acrylic, the smaller a little less. As usual, you’ll need a hook size slightly smaller than recommended for your yarn.

For both bunnies, I want the body to split at both ends to form the ears and legs. There are two ways of achieving this – by either making the ears first and then joining them, or by making the body first and then picking up and crocheting stitches to make the ears.

To join two tubes – make two tubes but do not fasten off the second of the two. Single-crochet into one stitch from the edge of the first tube, and then single crochet all the way round the first tube. When you reach the join, single crochet one stitch from the first and one stitch from the second tube together, this helps make the join close and minimises any hole left between the two tubes. You can now single crochet all round the stitches from both tubes as one.

To split a tube, as for the legs, carefully count the number of stitches you wish to split off to the right of the hook. For example, for the bunny’s legs, I wanted to split the 24-stitch body tube in half, so I counted back 12 stitches fom the hook. Insert the hook into this stitch from front to back, and single crochet. You can now work the leg stitches separately. You can work the other leg by picking up and crocheting the remaining 12 stitches. If splitting in three or more, determine how many stitches you need to pick up from each side, and  with the limb already worked to your left, so that you join the sides partway through the round – joining on the last stitch of the round will leave a larger hole.

If working the ears last, you’ll have started by chaining and joining to form the body. Pick up and crochet stitches from the top edge in the same way as you split off the legs.

Stuff as you go rather than trying to stuff the entire toy through an ear or foot!

OK, so here’s our pattern – mix and match the sections you want to make your bunny ears first or ears last, long or short in the body, and with large or small feet:

Ears first:
Single crochet 6 in magic ring
sc2 in each stitch
sc plain 8 rows
make 2 ears, but do not fasten off second.
Join ears together to work as one tube

Body – either working from base of ears, or ch 24 and join to work in round
(short body) sc plain 8 rows
(long body) sc plain 12 rows

Feet
(small feet) split off 12 sts, sc plain 1 round.
on second round, sc2 in each of 4 sts at front of foot, sc remaining sts plain
sc plain 2 rounds
sc2tog 12 times
draw yarn through remaining 4 sts and close
Pick up remaining 12 sts and make other leg in same way

(large feet)
Split off 12 sts, sc plain 2 rows
on third round, sc2 into each of front 4 sts, sc all other sts
on fourth round, hdc into front 8 sts of foot, sc all other sts
sc2 into each of front 4 sts, sc all other sts
sc 2 rows plain
(sc2tog 4 times, sc2) twice
sc2tog all round
fasten off and close
Pick up remaining 12 sts and work other leg in same way

Ears last: pick up 12 sts from top of body and sc plain 8 rows
sc2tog 6 times
draw yarn through remaining sts and fasten off
Pick up remaining 12 sts and work second ear in same way

Have fun! On Monday we’ll be taking this technique a little further and learning to join or split multiple tubes. And if you want more amigurumi patterns, don’t forget to check out my Japanese Crochet ebook!

You may also like:

1. How to design Amigurumi Part 4 – Octopus
2. How to design an amigurumi
3. Amigurumi basics – crochet a ball, make an owl or pufferfish