Amigurumi Tutorial: How to Do The Basic Stitches from Scratch

Learn the key techniques and tips you need to start creating your own amigurumi, with Marcelo Javier Cortés, the Prince of Crochet (el Príncipe del Crochet)

Designing and creating fun crochet characters is an easy and fun way to fill your world with beauty. Marcelo Javier Cortés is better known on social networks as el Príncipe del Crochet (the Prince of Crochet).

He loves transforming a whole variety of references (including images, poems and stories,) into Japanese-style crochet characters.

In this tutorial, he teaches you the basic techniques you need to create three stitches: single crochet, (generally known as double crochet in British English), increase, and decrease.

Find out more in the video.

3 basic amigurumi stitches

1. Single (or Double) Crochet

Push the needle through the centre of a magic ring you made earlier, pick up the yarn and pull it back though the loop so you now have two loops on your hook.

Bring another thread back though both of the loops on your hook. And that’s it, you’ve completed your first single crochet. Once you’ve finished stitching single crochets all around the circle, take the loose end and pull on it to fasten.

2. Increase

Insert your hook through one of the V’s formed by the intersection between two of the stitches in your magic ring. Pick up your yarn and create the two loops you need to do a single crochet stitch. Pick up the yarn and pull it back through both loops. The single crochet you have just completed is part of an increase; so now you need to insert the hook back through the same V and do a new single crochet stitch. Gradually increase each of the V’s in your magic circle.

3. Decrease

This technique decreases the diameter in a section of your pattern. It´s particularly useful when you want to round something off.

Insert your hook through a V. Pick up just one loop this time, not two like the previous example. When you go through a V, carry straight on through the neighboring loop too. This means you’ve automatically done two loops. Pick up the yarn with your hook and pull it back through both loops to make a single crochet. Your work immediately looks like it’s going down. Repeat the process for the entire section you want to decrease.

Like this tutorial? Marcelo teaches you how to complete the entire process, and amigurumi techniques to bring your crochet character to life in his online course: Amigurumi Design and Creation.

You may also be interested in:

- Intarsia Crochet: Craft Your Own Tapestry, a course by Flor Samoilenco
- Amigurumi: Creation of Characters Through Crochet, a course by Ameskeria
- What is Crochet?
- What is Amigurumi?
- Amigurumi Tutorial: Basic Magic Circle Technique
- Online Amigurumi courses