Stephanie has always been someone that I look up to in the crochet world, as I find that she always has new techniques and ideas to share! For example, she helped popularize using a dog brush to give yarn a “fuzzy” look. This time, I wanted to try her approach to face shaping for amigurumi!

• Appropriate weight yarn
• Appropriate gauge hook
• Embroidery needle

Tutorial by Stephanie at All About Ami

You could theoretically modify this shaping technique for any amigurumi head pattern, but I decided to stick with Stephanie’s Boucle Bear pattern, just for simplicity. Stephanie cautions against trying this technique with non-boucle yarn, as she is worried that the yarn strands and knots will show with flatter yarn, whereas the boucle yarn can help to camouflage the ends.

However, I knew my project needed normal ply yarn, so I took a bit of a risk and made some minor modifications. In order to hide the yarn ends, I actually threaded them under the two ’V’ legs of a stitch before tying the knot. Once the knot was tied, I was able to push the knot and remaining yarn back into the head, knowing that it was secure. To my untrained eye, I didn’t notice anything unusual about the back of the head.

I was pleasantly surprised by how such a small change made such a big impact on the final appearance! You can definitely see a more defined muzzle and eye indentation, and I think it makes the face look warmer and friendlier. I also loved how Stephanie provided two options, one for a bear face and one for a bunny face, and managed to create two very different looks while using the same stitch pattern.

I am so excited to show you the rest of this project, but while you wait, do you think that you could guess who I am trying to recreate? He is a silly old bear, after all.

Until next time, happy crafting!