# Why your amigurumi came out wrong

> Pointy, flat, lumpy, full of holes, or leaning. Seven things go wrong and most have one cause each — and two of them are arithmetic wearing a disguise.

**What goes wrong, and why.** 7 faults are covered below, and most have exactly one cause. Two of them are arithmetic wearing a disguise: a shape that is pointy or flat is an increase RATE that does not match the piece, and a shape that is lumpy is increases in the wrong PLACES. The rest are hook size, the wrong kind of decrease, the spiral, and how a piece is closed and sewn.

### The head is pointy, or flat, instead of round

**Why it happens.** The increases are at the wrong RATE. A sphere grows by six stitches a round for as many rounds as its radius, then stays straight for about as many again before decreasing. Increase for too few rounds and the piece runs out of width before it runs out of height — a cone. Increase for too many and it goes wide and flat before it can close.

**What to change.** Count the increase rounds against the straight ones. For a ball they should be roughly equal: five increase rounds, five straight, five decrease. If your pattern has three increase rounds and nine straight, you are crocheting a bullet, and no amount of stuffing will round it.

**Tool.** [See the rounds a proper sphere needs](https://crochet3d.com/tools/crochet-sphere-calculator)

### It is round-ish but lumpy, with corners

**Why it happens.** The increases are in the wrong PLACES. Six increases spaced evenly give a circle; six increases stacked above each other every round give a hexagon with six visible ridges running up it. Most patterns avoid it by shifting where the increase falls each round — which is exactly what “6x (2 sc, inc)” does, since the group length changes as the round grows.

**What to change.** Stagger them. If your pattern stacks increases and you can see the corners, move each round's first increase along by one or two stitches. The count stays the same; the ridge disappears.

### There are holes, or the stuffing shows through

**Why it happens.** The hook is too big for the yarn. This is almost always it. A ball band's hook size assumes a fabric with drape — a scarf, a jumper — and amigurumi wants the opposite: a fabric so dense it holds a shape and hides what is inside it.

**What to change.** Go down one or two hook sizes from the band, and expect the fabric to feel unpleasantly stiff in your hands. That stiffness is the point. If the holes are specifically at the decreases, that is a different cause — see the next one.

### The holes are only where it decreases

**Why it happens.** An ordinary decrease works two stitches together and leaves a small gap where their tops meet, which stuffing finds immediately. It is not a mistake, it is what that stitch does.

**What to change.** Use an invisible decrease: work into the FRONT loops only of the next two stitches, then finish them as one. It sits flatter and closes the gap. Any pattern that says “dec” on an amigurumi means this one, whether or not it says so.

### It leans, or there is a visible seam running up it

**Why it happens.** Amigurumi is worked in a continuous spiral rather than joined rounds, so the start of each round is one stitch further along than the last. That drift is normal and invisible in a dense fabric. A LEAN, though, usually means the piece was joined and turned inconsistently, or the marker moved.

**What to change.** Keep a marker in the first stitch of each round and move it up as you go. If you are joining rounds with a slip stitch instead, join every round the same way and accept the seam — it is a different construction, not a fault.

### The last hole will not close neatly

**Why it happens.** Too many stitches left when you stopped. Pulling six stitches shut leaves a pucker; pulling twelve shut leaves a visible rosette.

**What to change.** Decrease to six stitches, then fasten off leaving a long tail, thread it through the FRONT loop of each remaining stitch in turn — going around once, not through the middle — and pull. The stitches gather into the centre and the hole disappears. Then take the tail through the body and out somewhere else before trimming, so it cannot work loose.

### The arms and legs wobble, or the head tips

**Why it happens.** Too few anchor points. A limb sewn on through four stitches pivots on those four stitches, and a head sewn on through six will always nod.

**What to change.** Sew all the way around the join, catching every stitch of the limb's final round, and go around twice. For a head, stuff the neck firmly first — a soft neck tips however well it is sewn. Pin everything in place and look at it from the front before a single stitch goes in; a symmetrical toy with the ears on crooked reads as worse than an asymmetrical one.

**When the shape is wrong, check the counts first.** A round that is out by one is a real difference in the fabric, and it compounds: an increase missed on round 4 is still missing on round 20, by which point the piece is visibly wrong and the cause is sixteen rounds back. The [pattern planner](https://crochet3d.com/editor) checks every count as you type, and the [sphere calculator](https://crochet3d.com/tools/crochet-sphere-calculator) gives the rounds a proper ball needs.

The full article is at [https://crochet3d.com/learn/amigurumi-troubleshooting](https://crochet3d.com/learn/amigurumi-troubleshooting), with six questions answered.

Source: https://crochet3d.com/learn/amigurumi-troubleshooting