You may have seen many examples of amigurumi on the Internet. Many of them look super cute, while other just fail to meet the mark.

As some might say, what makes or breaks the picture are the eyes. While it sounds obviously unrelated, similar lessons can be drawn to create perfect looking amigurumi eyes.

Imagine – You see the perfect amigurumi from the back. It’s so cute and the colours are just awesome. You pick it up with great anticipation to see the front, only to see one eye deformed.

Perfectly anti-climatic.

To create the perfect looking eyes, we first need to know how we can make them.

5 ways to add amigurumi eyes

1. Safety eyes

Safety eyes are popular among amigurumi enthusiasts for adding eyes into their amigurumi.

They come in various sizes, colours and shapes. I’ve seen safety eyes from a small size of 1mm to big 8mm ones and above. For colours, there are various colours like black, blue, pink and green. And shapes, there are round ones, oval ones, heart shaped ones and many others.

Safety eyes are used for this cat. They are slightly matt, but they still work well.

Safety eyes are especially popular as they are easy to attach, and most of all, they have a three dimensional look. This adds more ‘life’ into the amigurumi. To add shine into the eyes, you can pick the non-matt ones.

Pros:

• Easy to attach
• A wide variety to choose from
• 3 dimensional look

Cons:

• Too much variety – Difficult to decide which to pick.
• Need to stock several sizes to determine which suits the current amigurumi

2. Embroiderd eyes

Embroidered eyes are less popular, but are in no way less effective than safety eyes. The simplest way is to loop yarn across the surface of the amigurumi.

This is mean elf, one of the amigurumi I created for Christmas. The facial features are done by looping yarn across the surface.

Embroidery is also good way to add tiny details to amigurumi. I particularly like the french knot and the satin stitch for creating the eyes.

With embroidery, you can create amigurumi eyes as small or as large as you want. You can mix colours, make irregular shapes, and be as creative as you want. People will go ‘Wow! You put so much effort in this!’ for sure.

The downside is that it’s a new set of skills to learn, something that takes time and effort. It does take time to embroider the eyes too, particularly the statin stitch.

Pros:

• Very detailed eyes
• Embroidery can be done with yarn
• Flexible

Cons:

• Time consuming
• New skills to learn

3. Surface crochet

As the name suggest, you do single crochets across the surface of the amigurumi. Like embroidery, you can infuse as much creativity as you wish into the eyes you’re creating. Most of all, it’s fun!

This is Ninja Kong. Kudos to SAPlanet for coming up with this idea!

This is tougher on tubes that you’ve crocheted  as surface crochet requires sufficient space to hold your yarn below the surface you’re crocheting on. Surface crochet also takes some imagination and designing to get the amigurumi eyes to actually look like eyes.

Pros:

• Flexible
• Fun!

Cons:

• Have to design eyes before hand
• Need a sufficiently large space for eyes.

4. Felt patches

An easy way to do great looking amigurumi eyes is to use felt. Felt offers as much flexibility as your cutting skills allow. You can easily create irregular shapes, use vibrant colours, stack colours on top of each other to create the eyes. To do this, you just need glue to attach the pieces together and then to the amigurumi.

However, using felt patches can be time consuming. Cutting felt is easy, but getting it perfect is difficult, and multiply that by two for the two symmetrical eyes you have to cut.

Pros:

• Easy to find in local craft stores
• Flexible

Cons:

• Required good cutting skills
• Difficult to make it perfect

5. Amigurumi patches

The last way I’ve come across for creating amigurumi eyes is to crochet them. You could do circles, ovals or rectangles for this.

This is not the best example as I’ve used safety eyes, but hopefully it’ll give you an idea of what eye patches look like.

One problem with crocheting the eyes is that details tend to be lost. Crochet stitches are relatively large for amigurumi, and it is difficult to crochet details without having a sufficiently sized amigurumi. No problem if you have a giant amigurumi.

Pros:

• Authentically amigurumi

Cons:

• Time consuming
• Details are lost if amigurumi is not big enough

Now it’s your turn:

• Think about which way is the best for your amigurumi
• Plan which method is the best before you start your amigurumi.

Share with me in the comments other ways you know of to create amigurumi eyes. Remember to share the love by Liking, tweeting or share this with your friends who are interested in amigurumi too.