I use glass gems for weight and stability in some of my patterns. Glass won’t rust or corrode over time, so it is safe to put inside your yarn, but I would not recommend it inside of anything meant for a child under the age of three.
I often recommend adding glass gems to the feet of dragons, etc. This will give them a little bit of weight, and glass gems have a flat side, so if you point the flat side down it also gives the animal stability.
You can find glass gems at any big box craft store or online. I didn’t even know what they were called when I first started searching for them, but I’d seen them and played with them before. They can regularly be found in the bottom of wedding center pieces and you’ll often find them in the floral section of your craft store. You can use other types of weights (people have told me they’ve used metal nuts, pennies, etc to do the same thing), but I prefer the glass gems.
Supplies: Ruler
One of the key supplies that I use constantly in the creation of my amigurumi and soft sculptures is a ruler. It can’t just be some generic ruler. THIS ISN’T PLAY TIME THIS IS SERIOUS.
I’ve tried just about every measurement stick you can find. I have cloth measuring tapes by themselves, measuring tapes in cutesy winder things, I have yard sticks and generic rulers, I even had an etsy seller make me a custom Leather bracelet that was stamped with ruler markings! If Only I could find that!
But my favorite by far is an antique wooden ruler that I found at a flea market. It is 6 inches long, but unfolds to be a full 2 feet long. On one side it has inches and the other it has centimeters. It is a Carpenter’s ruler and it looks like the photo below. It is THE BEST. And you should find one too — or whatever floats your boat.
Photo found here.
Supplies: Wire
I frequently use wire in my patterns to help with stability, strength and poseability. It is important to me to be able to explain exactly how to assemble the soft sculptures in my patterns, so within my patterns there are often step by step written and photographic instructions for how to assemble your soft sculpture using wire. Figuring out the perfect wire to use has been an interesting journey that I am STILL ON.
As a fluke, I found that packages of paper-wrapped 18 gauge 18 inch faux floral wire works really well for what I want it to do. The crumpled paper wrapped around the wire offers a nice friction resistance against the yarn crochet work, so pieces that you crochet won’t shift as much once the wire is inside, because the wire isn’t just smooth. This particular wire that I recommend also happens to be fairly stiff for 18 gauge wire, and the paper-wrapped quality adds girth to the wire, so although 18 gauge is fairly small, the paper makes it much thicker.
The 18 gauge, 18 inch CLOTH wrapped wire is NOT created equally to the paper wrapped stuff. I’ve found that the cloth wrapped wire is far to malleable and won’t hold up the weight of a crocheted wing (for example) the same way that the paper wrapped wire does. Unfortunately, I also found out that there is no firmness descriptor on packages of wire meant for faux foliage. So it can definitely be a bit of a process to locate a perfect wire to use in your work. Keep in mind, you also DO NOT want the wire to rust.
I explain this because although I found the wire easy to locate in stores here in America (big box craft stores), for my overseas customers it was not so easy. Overseas customers have found wire more readily available at their local home improvement stores — Wire used for fencing or hangers works well, but you should always have a pliers on hand for trimming and shaping. You don’t want a wire that’s TOO stiff, because then you run the risk of not being able to shape it as exactly as you need.
So basically, go out there and find the goldilocks of wire. Good luck!
Supplies: What's the skinny on Polyfil?
Out of all the supplies you use to make amigurumi, polyfil is one of the super important ones that we care least about. It goes on the inside of the amigurumi and gives your work shape and body.
I strongly prefer generic polyfil - the kind of polyfil that feels more like cotton gives my sensory issues the heebie jeebies. So I prefer the stuff that feels like acrylic clouds. Also, I told my daughter they’re called “Clouds” and she will often ask to play with my “clouds”.
There are more options and tricks for stuffing your amigurumi. You know all those yarn tails you get after weaving in your ends? If you save them, you can use them to stuff your next amigurumi!
Also, when you make an all black amigurumi - like a black unicorn, and you’d like to stuff it, it can be a little odd looking to stuff it with white polyfil as the white will peek through all of the holes of the crochet work. If you don’t like the look of the white peeking through, there are ways around it! You can take a nylon stocking, and fill THAT with polyfil as you stuff it inside the amigurumi. The nylon stocking will contain and mask the bright white and you won’t notice inside your work. Your second option would be to pick up some very cheap black yarn and use that to stuff your work. You can find cheap black (or any color) yarn at thrift stores and in the clearance section of your local big box craft stores. Stuffing amigurumi with yarn means that your amigurumi will be much heavier than if you stuffed it with polyfil, but you will not see the inner stuffing through your crochet work AT ALL.
I hope this helped!!