A lot of the projects that I make involve crocheting spheres or round balls. The teddy bears and bunnies I make are super easy once you understand how to increase and decrease stitches, and when to do it. If you know how to do that you can make any size ball you want to. Here are some quick instructions for how to crochet a ball or other type of sphere for plushies and other crochet projects.
How to Crochet a Ball or Sphere
- Round 1: Six single crochet in a magic ring (6)
- Round 2: Increase around (12)
- Round 3: Single crochet, increase around (18)
- Round 4: Single crochet single crochet, increase around (24)
- Round 5: Three single crochet, increase around (30)
Do this in this succession as many times as you need to until the diameter of the ball is the size you are looking for. The next logical progression would be four single crochet, increase (repeated around), and so on until you get the size you want.
Depending upon how tall you want your circle, in other words if you don’t want it to just be round in the case of making a body for a teddy bear you can single crochet around for as many rows as you would like before you start decreasing. That will give you the length of the body, for example.
When you start decreasing you would use the very same stitches, only backward. In other words, the way it would look is this:
(You would begin your decrease rows with the number of single crochets that you used in your last increase row. Your round number will depend on how many single crochet rows you added before you began decreasing.)
- Three single crochet, decrease around (24)
- Two single crochet, decrease around (18) – (At this point you would stuff the ball and then continue with the next couple rounds)
- One single crochet, decrease around (12)
- Decrease around (6)
And to close, what you would do is to join after your last decrease slip stitch, then fasten off, leaving a long tail. Use the long tail and a needle with a large eye to sew around the decreased stitches in the last row and pull closed, kind of like a drawstring bag. What I usually do at this point is to weave in some of that tale and then bury the rest of the yarn tail.
Alternatively, if you are sewing two balls together like in the above photo, you can leave them each open and sew them together, securing the openings at the same time.
How to Bury a Yarn Tail
If you’ve been crocheting very long, you probably already do this. But once your yarn tail is secure and the closure won’t open easily, you could poke the needle into the ball, pushing it out the other side. Remove the needle and make a knot close to the ball. Clip the excess yarn, or if it’s short enough, use a chopstick to poke that end back into the stuffing.
NOTE: If the yarn is thick like the Bernat Blanket yarn I use for my plushies, you can actually weave the tail around some of the stitches and you won’t see it. But if that’s not an option, you can just follow instructions as they are written.
And that’s how you crochet a ball or a sphere or whatever you want to call it. Once you learn how crocheting in the round works, you’ll get faster and find it much easier to make crocheted plushies.
If you’d like a little handholding when you make your first plushie, or you just hate making up your own patterns, you can check out my pattern my crocheted Bunny plush. It’s only $3.48 and very easy to follow for the beginning crocheter.
