I made my first amigurumi, Sal the traveling cat, in 2006. Since then I have created over 100 amigurumis, all sorts of different animals from dogs to monkeys and from elephants to alligators.

All my amigurumis are variations of three different patterns.

One is the round-headed, thin-necked animal shape which I have used in my penguin pattern. All my cat and monkey amigurumis have been made using this pattern.

The second pattern I could call the “perpendicular-head”. The amigurumis I have made using this pattern have a long, oval-shaped head which is made of two separate large pieces and is attached vertically to the body. I have used it in my Jazz Crow pattern and for example in Pedro the Chihuahua Dog, which you can see in the featured image above.

In these two patterns the shape of the body piece stays the same.

In the third pattern the body piece is different, and the head pieces is made accordingly to give the animal a sturdy shape. It is used for animals with a thick neck: owls, bears, frogs. The body is based on the same basic circle as all the other pieces, but the decreases on the upper part of the body are different. The owl and the seal patterns that have been published in Kotivinkki magazine (in Finnish only, sorry) use this pattern.

You can find a collection of my amigurumi photos in Instagram. Look closely and you will notice that there really are only two different body shapes and two different heads. Then you just add paws, tails, wings, snouts, manes, eyes and whiskers to give the animals their looks.