How to Puff stitch and Bobble stitch
Crochet Stitches 101

2024-05-22 1119 words 6 minutes

Learn how to crochet the Puff stitch & Bobble stitch and how to incorporate them in your Amigurumi designs to bring them to the next level!

Puff up your paws & Bobble up your life!

Contents

Wazzuuuup Crochet Crew?

In this quick tutorial, I will show you how to crochet the Puff stitch and the Bobble stitch and explain what the difference between these 2 quite similar but still unique crochet stitches is.

Classic designs of Amigurumi rely mostly on the arrangement of simple crochet stitches such as the single crochet, increases and decreases. This is usually more than enough to make any design work and also part of the underlying philosophy of Amigurumi: creating shapes with as simple as possible building blocks. Yet, sometimes adding a couple of, let’s call ’em “more exotic” stitches into your designs can really put your already solid Amigurumi designs over the top and make them stand out even more. Both, the Puff stitch and Bobble stitch are that kind of crochet stitches and make for great details in a lot of Amigurumi work.

Puff stitch and Bobble stitch are so alike, but yet so different

Both, crocheting the Puff stitch and the Bobble stitch rely on creating a cluster of multiple unfinished stitches of a certain type. For the Puff stitch, this is unfinished half double crochet stitches and for the Bobble stitch, it’s unfinished double crochet stitches. There is no fixed number of how many unfinished crochet stitches each cluster consists of, but something around 3-5 is very common.

But, that is why it is important to indicate the number of unfinished crochet stitches used for the Puff stitches and Bobble stitches when writing down patterns, which I usually do by including that number in my stitch notations as follows. For example, a crochet Bobble stitch consisting of 4 unfinished double crochet stitches, I would include in my pattern as bo4 (bo being the common abbreviation for the Bobble stitch) and a Puff stitch with 5 unfinished half double crochet stitches, I would write as Puff5. You get the deal.

What to use Puff stitch & Bobble stitch for in your crochet designs?

Simple answer: paws! Everybody knowing me knows how much I love designing cat Amigurumi and there is no better and easier way to give them kitty paws that sweet paw shape than adding some Bobble or Puff stitches to their arms and legs.

This is also how I first came across these types of stitches, when fiddling with one of my first crochet designs and looking for an easy way to create a nice paw shape. This turned out to be Puff stitches with 6 unfinished half double crochets giving my Mon€yki N€ko some fluffy fingers.

I also used the Puff stitch to create comfy ear cushions on the headphones of my derp monkey. In this case, we crochet Puff stitches with 4 unfinished half double crochet stitches.

With the help of some Bobble stitches with 3 unfinished double crochet stitches, I was able to create the super fluffy feet for my latest Amigurumi pattern, Kanye the Gangsta Cat.

Crochet Puff stitch - Step by step written instructions

To start off here, I make a foundation chain for demonstration purposes. In this example, I will do a Puff3, so a Puff stitch consisting of 3 unfinished half double crochet stitches. Adjust the number of repetitions along with the size of Puff stitch you want to crochet.

Yarn over and insert your hook into the upcoming chain/stitch and pull the yarn through. This should leave you with 3 loops on your hook now. This also completes the first unfinished half double crochet, as we started off the same as a regular half double crochet, but left out yarning over and pulling through all 3 loops on the hook.
Repeat step 1 within the same chain/stitch you inserted the hook into before. You should now have 5 loops on your hook. This concludes the second unfinished half double crochet stitch.
Repeat step 1 again within the same chain/stitch. This should now leave you with 7 loops on the hook. This is the third and in this case final unfinished half double crochet stitch. If we were to crochet a bigger Puff stitch consisting of even more unfinished half double crochet stitches, we were to repeat step 1 some more times.
Yarn over again and this time pull through all of the loops on the hook. The loops on your hook should equal the number of unfinished half double crochet stitches times 2 + 1, so for the Puff3, this makes 7 loops in total.

What’s important, especially when crocheting the Puff stitch, is to keep your loops as loose as possible to be able to pull through all of them with ease at the end. If they are too tight, you’re gonna have a bad time and your puff stitches will end up looking messy. If you get stuck with your hook while trying to pull through, try gently wiggling the hook to proceed one loop at a time without slipping past a loop.

Crochet Bobble stitch - Step by step written instructions

As with the Puff stitch above, I start off with a foundation chain here also. I will demonstrate a bo3 (Bobble stitch with 3 unfinished double crochet stitches). Again, change the number of repetitions accordingly.

Start off the Bobble stitch the same as with a normal double crochet stitch by yarning over and then insert your hook into the next chain/stitch. Pull the yarn through, which should leave you with 3 loops on your hook.
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Yarn over again and pull through the first 2 of the 3 loops on your hook. You should now have 2 loops on your hook. This completes the first unfinished double crochet stitch, leaving out the final step of yarning over again and pulling through the leftover 2 loops.
Repeat steps 1 and 2, but keep working within the same stitch. You should now have 3 loops on your hook. This is the second unfinished double crochet stitch.
Repeat steps 1 and 2 again. You should now have 4 loops on your hook. With this, we have completed the third and for a bo3 (= Bobble stitch with 3 unfinished double crochet stitches) final unfinished double crochet stitch. Keep repeating steps 1 and 2 for even bigger Bobbles.
Yarn over a final time and pull through all the loops on your hook. Beforehand you can check a final time that you have the number of unfinished double crochet stitches + 1 loops on your hook, making it 4 in the case of our bo3 here.