How to Crochet in the Oval
Amigurumi & Crochet Design

Wazzuuuup Crochet Crew?

Another One! One more staple in my Amigurumi designs that I also consider wildly underutilized is crocheting in the oval. Everybody knows how to crochet in the round and do circles and nice balls resulting from it. But truth of the matter is that ovals are simply just better suited for a lot of shapes in Amigurumi. So, let me show you how it’s done so you can go put a lot of them nice lil’ ovals all over your Amigurumi designs!

There is 2 kinds of ovals that can be done via crochet that I want to show you today.

DISCLAIMER: When speaking of “oval”, it’s actually an ellipsis shape but called “crocheting in the oval” anyhow, so I’m sticking to it throughout this page.

I crochet circles around everyone, why would I do ovals?

Now, you might think to yourself: “I can do nice circles and balls and make great Amigurumi from that”, and you’re not wrong there. But oval-based shapes can just make your design that tee-wee bit better or your life designing Amigurumi a lot easier. While, often you can achieve quite similar results with the right way of stuffing and shaping your Amigurumi, using a better crocheted shape from the get-go will help you get the same or better results in a more sustained manner.

For example, sticking to the oval aids you in maintaining aesthetic proportions, like a head does not need to have the same diameter all around. And so, adding round after round for example to get the appropriate width of a cat head, will just blow up your whole design, make it unnecessarily big and mess up the proportions. Also, there’s not a lot of perfect circles and balls out there in the wild, making oval-based shapes the much more natural shape and will help your designs to be much easier recognized as what it is supposed to be.

Other than that, there are certainly some shapes that simply ask for an oval shape, so it will come in handy at some point for sure.

What to use Ovals for in your Amigurumi designs?

Step by Step instructions for an Oval with a magic ring basis

1. Start off with a magic ring and 6 single crochets.

2. Make the second round the same way as you would do for a circle and bring your stitch count up to 12 by doing 6 increases.

3. Now, we start to deviate from business as usual. Instead of switching between a single crochet and an increase all the way around, make 3 single crochets. This will be the long side of your oval.

4. Then, go on by doing 3 increases back to back. This will make the curved tip of your oval.

5. Repeat what you already did in this round for a second time. So, make another 3 single crochets followed by 3 increases. This also marks the end of round 3.

6. From here on after, the 3 single crochets at the beginning and half point will stay constant and you will proceed to add single crochets between your increases the same way as you would do with a circle. So, for round 4 you will do the 3 single crochets followed by 3 times alternating between a single crochet and an increase. The whole thing has to be repeated a second time to finish up this round.

7. Increasing the number of single crochets between each increase again brings us to 2 single crochets and an increase. What I like to do for even numbers of single crochets in between increases though, is split them up to put half before and after the increase. So, instead of doing 3 times 2 single crochets and an increase, that will be 3 times single crochet, increase and another single crochet. This is good for the oval shape, because this way increases end up a bit more on the curved sides, instead of all the way to the edge of that part and you will not have a visible increase line forming, as increases of each consecutive round will not be touching each other. But, I digress. So, this leaves us with 3 single crochets followed by a single crochet, increase and another single crochet times 3 and then the whole thing repeated a second time. This brings us up to a stitch count of 30 and marks the end of round 4.

Written as pattern this looks something like this:

Step by Step instructions for an Oval with a foundation chain as basis

This technique is not that different to the one using the magic ring. But, by starting off with a foundation chain, we can increase the number of single crochets on the 2 flat sides (which were 3 with the magic ring basis) and thereby create much different, namely longer and less rounded oval shapes.

1. Start off with a foundation chain of desired length. The more chains you make the long the flat sides of your oval will be. For this example let’s chain 6 plus 1 for turning, so 7 chains in total.

2. For the first round, make 5 single crochets so that you reach the end of the chain. Then put 3 single crochets into one chain and repeat the same thing on the other side of the chain.

3. Then, continue the same way as with the magic ring basis with the only difference of having 5 single crochets as a constant on each flat side. This makes 5 single crochets followed by 3 increases and that repeated a second time for round 2.

Then, you can proceed to add single crochets in between the increases as you move on to further rounds, but I would not recommend to use this technique to add too many rounds. With every round, your flat piece will become more curved, so what I like to use this technique for most is feet/shoes by doing the first (max second) round and then proceed to form the rest of the foot/shoe by continuing in the back loop only. But, experiment with it and see what works for you.

Again, written as pattern we got something like this:

Congrats, you're now one step further on your journey to become an Amigurumi master designer! 💯

Feel free to reach out to me via Instagram or E-Mail if you have any questions you wanna hit me with.