Sitting Puppy Dog

by Jen Hayes https://www.jenhayescreations.com/crochet-puppy-dog/

Sitting Puppy Dog
Sitting Puppy Dog

Skill Level: Advanced Intermidiate

Finished Size: Using hook size E/4 (3.5 mm) from the base to the top of the head, measurement is approximately 9.5 inches (24 cm) tall.

Sitting Fluffy Puppy Dog
Sitting Fluffy Puppy Dog

Materials:
Gauge: Not essential

Notes:

Abbreviations, Notes and Tips:
Sitting Puppy Dog
Sitting Puppy Dog

Instructions:
Assembly
Assembly
Assembly
Pinning before stitching to determine the best placement is so important for creating professional-looking pieces!

>Design Tip: One of the biggest tricks to assembling amigurumi, in my opinion, is pinning your pieces and then taking the time needed to ensure that you are stitching them on in a way that you are happy with them. I’ll give you some general ideas of where I placed my pieces, but ultimately, do what looks best to you.

>Design Tip: Remember when attaching your pieces to add more stuffing each time right before closing to eliminate having a gap with no stuffing between the joined pieces.

Muzzle
Before pinning and attaching the muzzle you’ll want to make sure to add your safety nose. I placed my nose between Rnd 3 and 4 in a central position. The actual muzzle I placed about one row below the eyes.

Add stuffing to your muzzle. I stuffed mine a little and then pinned it to the face for placement. After stitching for a while I added more stuffing until I was overall pleased with the appearance and firmness.

Ears
I pinned my ears on the top of the head approximately five rounds out in either direction from the very center. The ears are NOT stuffed.

Tail
I placed the bottom part of the tail at Rnd 10 of the body.

Hind Legs
The hind legs were probably the trickiest part for me to get placed evenly. What I found that helped me the most was to place my dog on a solid surface, like a tabletop, and look at it directly from the front. This way I could see how both legs were positioned in comparison to each other.

With the hind legs, you will want to stitch all the way around the part that was worked in rows and the top part of the last round where it was left unworked. Right before closing up the leg, add stuffing to the area that was worked in rows.

Making A Fluffy Dog
Fluffy
Fluffy Dog

>Design Tip: It will likely be helpful to read through this entire section before beginning so you have a better idea of the entire process and then move forward as you think best.

I’ll tell you now, turning your dog into a fluffy dog is a labor of love. It’s going to take some time, but in my opinion, it’s worth it!

If you haven’t already done so, start by completing and assembling the dog pattern above. The next step involves cutting a whole lot of lengths of yarn. My lengths of yarn are approximately 5 inches (13 cm) long. The easiest way to do this is to cut a piece of cardboard (a cereal box will do) to 2.5 inches (6 cm) tall by 5 inches (13 cm) wide.

The width of the cardboard can actually be as long or as short as you wish. You’ll be rapping your yarn around the height of the cardboard and then cutting it off the cardboard in one place, leaving pieces that are about 5 inches (13 cm) in length.

Personally, I placed my yarn tail at the bottom of the cardboard rectangle, wrapped it around about 50 times and then slipped my scissors between the cardboard and the yarn at the very bottom and cut it there. This way no yarn was wasted.

How many lengths of yarn will you need? Well, this will vary some. I advise you to think about the pattern that you want on your dog. Perhaps you have a dog and you’d like to mimic their pattern. You could also look online at dogs, or just make up your own.

Call me crazy, but I went ahead and counted the strands as I went to give you an idea of how many I used in my design. Exactly how many you need may vary widely, so it may be a good idea to cut quite a few to get you started and then cut more as you go along. For the brown and tan dog, I cut 1,734 strands of Color A and 1,418 strands of Color B. Like I said, a labor of love because now that they’re cut it’s time to loop them onto the dog, but it’s gonna be worth it!

I’m going to give you a general idea of my process for looping, but if you find a better method, by all means, use it.

I personally started my loops around the eyes and the nose, using Color B. This is a tricky area to work around because the eyes and nose are attached there. Work as closely as you can, even sticking your hook under the edges if you can, all the way around, trying to completely fill in the space. Personally, my goal was to not have any Color A showing through.

Once this is done you can really start working wherever you want. Personally, I just continued working on the face and head in a combination of Color A and Color B (as I’d decided based on my desired pattern) and then moved out to the other parts of the body. The whole bottom portion of my dogs are worked in Color A so I opted to fill in most of this color first and then went in with Color B.

Let’s Talk About How to Make Loops
Making Loops
Making Loops

Let’s Talk About Yarn Loop Placement
Other than right around the eyes and the nose where I placed Color B as solidly as possible, I worked the rest of the loops around every other row of stitches for the most part. I felt this provided adequate coverage and fluffiness. If a spot looked a little bare than I added a few loops along parts of the skipped row, but not complete rows. That said if you want an even fluffier dog simply add more loops everywhere.

There were a few spots that I opted to leave unworked completely. The first of these was the 5Rnds on the bottom of each of the feet. The second is underneath each of the ears. For the ear, I worked 2sts on either edge of the underside of the ear and then a couple of complete rows at the very bottom, but I then left the rest of the middle underside of the ear alone.

Let’s Talk About Blending
To me, stopping Color A and just beginning with Color B looked too abrupt in some ways. To eliminate this and to create a “blend” with the yarns, about 2 rows before I switched to Color B I worked those two (or so) rows differently. I kept them primarily Color A, but every third stitch or so I made it Color B. Then on the next row I did the same thing but made sure not to line up any of the Color B stitches. After this, I switched fully to Color B to finish out my desired pattern. Blending accomplished!

Another thing I did when I wasn’t quite satisfied with how the blending looked was to loop in either Color A or Color B (depending on what was needed to make a better blend) onto some of the stitches in the rows that were skipped.

Trimming
Making A Fluffy Dog
Blending the Colors
Blending the Colors & Trimming

There’s a super cute face hidden under all that fluff! Let’s find it!

This part is both fun and a bit messy. Be prepared to have yarn fluff everywhere! How you decide to sculpt your dog is going to be left up to you for the most part, but I’ll give you a few tips.

  1. Get a clear picture in your head (and even better an actual picture) of how you want your dog to look.
  2. Start with the face and then the front legs. Once satisfied with these, move on to other parts.
  3. Trimming less and in multiple passes is probably always the best idea. The hair obviously won’t grow back so if you take off small bits at a time as opposed to large, deep chunks it’s easier to fix if needed. That said if you totally dislike an area that you cut you can make more loops and switch them out, but this likely won’t be too fun.
  4. Use your initial trimming passes to add shape to your dog and then focus on more detailed trimming.
  5. Sometimes it’s hard to know when to stop. Take your time. Walk away if you’re feeling frustrated or don’t know exactly what you want to do next.
  6. Have fun! All dogs look different. Yours will be unique no matter what!
Make a collar for your puppy.

This page was updated on August 25, 2020.
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