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In 2012, I first presented the two amigurumi ‘Perfect Stripes’ techniques I’d developed (the Invisible Join and No-Cut Join), and they were vastly superior to any of the other techniques that existed at the time. But now, a decade later, it’s time to revisit my recommendations – can I improve on ‘perfect’? I believe I can!

I’ve spent a lot of time making amigurumi stripes this year – while working on the samples for my upcoming Snake Collection and Temperature Snake patterns (both coming next week – stay tuned!) – and all this practice has led to some innovations and a new recommended stripe method for you.

To compare my three perfect stripes techniques, I worked up each of my new striped snake designs using a different stripe method, so we can clearly see how each method looks in a real project.

L-R: No-Cut Join, Invisible Join (modified – see below), Ultimate Stripes

It turns out that neither of the old ‘Perfect Stripes’ methods was quite perfect – if you’re interested in seeing why, let’s take a close look at both, and then I’ll introduce you to my Ultimate Stripes technique!

(Or you can skip the rest of this explanation and jump straight to the Ultimate Stripes for Amigurumi tutorial – I won’t be offended…)

The No-Cut Join: Good (apart from the seam)

The No-Cut Join is still the best technique I’ve found to get the beginning and end of each stripe of colour to line up without cutting the yarn between rounds.

I’ve carried all three yarn colours all the way along the inside of this snake – there’s no need to cut the yarn at all!

It does give a perfect ring of colour every time, but if you look carefully you can see the seam line progressing along the length of the amigurumi.

Follow the line between the two arrows and you can see the ‘seam’ running along the body of this snake

The seam line is subtle, but it means you don’t get a truly perfect result.

The Invisible Join: Great (but only with a fix)

The Invisible Join can be truly invisible, but (as I discovered this year) that’s only the case if you make sure to insert your hook beneath both the duplicated stitch and the original loops beneath the duplicate stitch. If you fail to do this, you’ll end up with a visible horizontal bar above the first stitch of each round (it’s actually the front loop of the first stitch).

Look closely and you’ll see two horizontal bars (marked by arrows) visible at the location of the Invisible Joins from two rounds.

I didn’t notice this subtlety until earlier this year (so I didn’t mention it in the original tutorial) but once I’d seen it, I couldn’t unsee it (and then my perfectionism made me do some crochet magic to fix my entire temperature snake that suffered from this problem – ugh!)

Here’s the difference made by the Invisible Join ‘fix’:

L: Working into just the top loops (the duplicated stitch) leaves a visible horizontal bar in the round below (marked by arrow).
R: Working into both the duplicated stitch and the top loops of the original stitch just below makes a slightly bulkier stitch that covers that extra bar.

As with the No-Cut Join, the colour stripes do line up perfectly, and yes, there’s no seam with this method, but there is still that error if you’re looking for it, unless you remember to always catch that extra loop in your stitch when you get to the start of the previous round.

If you remember to crochet over the extra loop, it’s practically impossible to spot the join (although the stitch that’s worked over the extra loop may look slightly taller).

Both these methods are still very good, and far better than the jog you get with any of the traditional methods for striped amigurumi, so if you don’t want to change how you work, I’m still happy to recommend either of these methods.

But I still wasn’t satisfied, so I went back to the drawing board to come up with a new method that, in my opinion, is the best ever…

The Ultimate Stripes for Amigurumi: The Best!

After experiencing frustration with both my old methods this year, I’ve come up with a new ‘perfect stripes’ method that looks completely perfect!

• It’s slightly more invisible than the Invisible Join (and you don’t have to remember to catch that pesky extra loop with each round).
• It’s barely more trouble than the No-Cut Join (although it does still mean cutting the yarn with every round, even when you don’t change colour).

With Ultimate Stripes the joins are completely undetectable! Where are they in this pic? I honestly couldn’t tell you…

I’m calling this new method Ultimate Stripes for Amigurumi (as the ‘perfect’ and ‘invisible’ names were already taken with my previous techniques!) and this technique is the official PlanetJune-recommended stripe method from now on.

I believe this truly is the ultimate method for making perfect amigurumi stripes, and I hope you’ll give it a try with your next stripey amigurumi!

Go to the Ultimate Stripes for Amigurumi tutorial >>