How to design Amigurumi Part 4 – Octopus

Today, let’s finish up our series on designing your own amigurumi, by combining the techniques we’ve learned so far. Of course, many simple amigurumi patterns can be improvised on the fly, but working out the outline of a pattern beforehand can save you having to rip out and redo parts of your design, and  ensure that what you make closely matches what you had envisioned.

Lets work through the process with this octopus amigurumi.

Step 1 – Make a sketch and break it down into shapes

Here’s my octopus sketch. As you can see, he has a part-sphere for the top of his head, working into a part inverted cone. The tentacles are tubes with cones at the ends, and the bottom of the body is flat.

Step 2 – calculate row and stitch counts

The first part of this is working out where to start. If you have a place where stitch count is critical, start there. Otherwise, you could start at the widest point, at the cast-on, or wherever you find it easiest to work from.

In this case, I have a convenient place to begin at the bottom of the body where the tentacles split off. I need the stitch count here to be a multiple of 8, so that each tentacle has an even number of stitches. It would also be convenient, although not essential, if the count was a multiple of 6, as the shaping for the upper part of the body will be achieved my making 6 increases or decreases per row. 8×3 is 24, which is also divisible by 6.

Now I have a number to begin with, I can calculate stitch and row counts for other parts of the body. I’d like my octopus to be about 20% taller than he is wide at the base. To figure out the width at the base, we divide the stitch count by pi and double it, to get the diameter.

(24/3.14) x 2 = 15.3

15.3 x 1.2 = 18.3

We can round this down to 18 rows – our body will need to be 18 rows tall.

The stitch count at the widest point isn’t critical – let’s pick a number that is a multiple of 6, and somewhat bigger than the stitch count at the base. 36 seems about right.

From the top to the widest point, we then need to increase regularly from 6 to 36 stitches. We need to make 6 increases a row to make a half sphere, so we have the start of our pattern:

Make 6 into magic ring.
sc2 into every st (12)
(sc2 in same st, sc1) 6 times (18)
(sc2 in same st, sc2) 6 times (24)
(sc2 in same st, sc3) 6 times (30)
(sc2 in same st, sc4) 6 times (36)

This is 6 of our 18 rows. Over the remaining 12, we need to decrease from 36 to 24 stitches. It’s up to you how you spread out these decreases. I chose:

sc plain 4 rows
(sc2tog, sc4) 6 times
sc plain 3 rows
(sc2tog, sc3) 6 times
sc plain 3 rows

That brings us to the bottom of the body, where we’re going to split off to make the tentacles. Splitting a tube was described in Friday’s post, although in this case we’re going to chain some stitches rather than pick up from both sides of the tube.

For each tentacle (make 8):
pick up and sc 3 stitches from base of body. ch3
Join in round, sc 1 round

We want our tentacles to curve, so lets use half double crochet to add some shaping:

(sc3, hdc3) 10 times
(sc2tog, sc1) twice
sc plain 3 rounds, fasten off

Finally, we have the base – we want this to be flat, so we need to make 8 decreases in each round. We can pick up the chain stitches from the undeside of the tentacles, giving us 24 stitches to begin with. (actually, to minimise holes, I picked up and crocheted together one stitch from the tentacle and one stitch from the body at the side of each tentacle, but this still gives 24 sts)

Pick up and sc 24 sts
(sc2tog, sc1) 8 times (16 sts)
sc2tog 8 times (8 sts)
sc2tog 4 times, draw through remaining sts and fasten off.

And that’s our octopus pattern! I hope you’ll enjoy applying these techniques to make your own designs. A quick recap:

• Break down your design into simple shapes. 6 increases/decreases a round makes a sphere/part-sphere. 8 per round makes a flat surface. Cones and tubes can connect these together.
• Start your calculations either where stitch count is important, or at the widest point
• Use circumference=radius x pi to work out stitch and row counts where necessary
• If you want limbs and other appendages to stick out at an angle, or to appear ‘pinched’ at the base, make them separately and sew on. If you want them to be continuous, split and/or join tubes.
• You can add extra shaping using half-double-crochet (tall-row shaping)

Have fun!

You may also like:

1. How to design an amigurumi
2. Amigurumi design 3 – no-sew amigurumi – Ugly bunnies
3. Amigurumi basics – crochet a ball, make an owl or pufferfish