This week I checked out Lovable Amigurumi Toys: 15 Doll Crochet Projects by Mari-Liis Lille (Lilleliis) and I’m going to share my review with you so you know what it’s all about.
Thank you to Meteoor Books who provided this book to me free of charge in exchange for my honest opinion.
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Lovable Amigurumi Toys has a lovely hard cover but the colours on the cover wouldn’t have made me excited to pick this up off the shelf in a store. With muted orange and greys, unless this book was sitting directly at eye level it would have unfortunately, been by-passed. It actually kind of reminded me of a toned down version of a For Dummies Guide book. This is a shame because this book contains some really cute toy projects. It’s a perfect example of not to judge a book by it’s cover.
Patterns Included in Lovable Amigurumi Toys
There are 15 doll crochet patterns included in Lovable Amigurumi Toys. The toys included are:
- Sebastian – a little boy wearing a hat and glasses
- Baby Bumblebee – a sleeping baby wearing a bee outfit
- Arabella – a female doll with a rufflely top
- Bianka – A female doll with braided pigtails
- Mighty Robot – a toy robot
- Little Ella – a female doll with large braided pigtails and a pixie-style hat
- Jakob the Brave Soldier – a male doll in a soldier’s costume
- Katarina the Bllerina – a sweet female ballerina doll
- Ronja the Troll Girl – a troll doll with tall hair
- Martin the Light-Hearted Snowman – a cute snowman with a hat and scarf
- Angel Doll – female doll with large braided pigtails and wings
- Baby Leo – a baby doll wearing a diaper
- Froggy – a female doll wearing a frog suit
- Rag Doll Annie – a femal doll with large pigtails
- Jester the Christmas Gnome – a male doll that looks similar to a Christmas elf
The reference section for Lovable Amigurumi Toys is prominently at the front of the book and is incredibly thorough and well done. It’s got clear, steo-by-step photos for all the basic stitches used but it also walks you through crocheting in a spirl, changing colours, attaching limbs, making hair and more. It was really comprehensive and well executed.
Materials Used in Lovable Amigurumi Toys
Most of the projects in Lovable Amigurumi Toys use light worsted or worsted weight cotton for the bulk of the project. Fingering weight, sport and super bulky weight. yarns are used for various projects for making hair. The hook size used most often in the book is 3.0mm (C). Most of the yarns used in the book are accessible online or through a local yarn store. I’ve never seen the yarns used in this book at a big box store like Michaels or Walmart so they may be a little harder to source if you aren’t willing to shop online.
The patterns themselves were very clear and simple to follow. Each pattern has a little description giving the toys a personality to help bring them to life which I thought was a cute addition. The patterns in the book are given skill levels of easy, intermediate and advanced but personally, I’d recommend this book for intermediate level crocheters or crocheters that have a lot of experience with amigurumi.
The one thing I found missing in the book is gauge information and yardage. Many of the patterns have hair caps or pieces that fit over the heads of your toys so to have the gauge information or at least a tip about making the hair caps fit was disappointing. I recently made a doll for a friend (from a different book) and I made the head and the hair cap on two separate days. No gauge information was included so I just went with it. Can you guess what happened? The hair cap didn’t fit. My gauge had changed and there was no way it was fitting on that doll so I had to make another one. Not having the yardarge or gauge can potentially leave you disappointed by having something like the hair cap not fitting or not having the right amount of yarn. The doll sizes mean nothing without the gauge information because I have no way of ensuring that my doll will be the exact same size. If that isn’t a big deal to you, then that’s fine. Just something I noticed and wanted to mention.
Overall this book is a sweet little amigurumi pattern book that has a fun mix of different projects in it. Although it has some things missing that I would consider standard inclusions for a pattern book, the patterns are solid and it comes with a great resource section.
If you are interested in checking out Lovable Amigurumi Toys by Mari-Liis Lille you can find it HERE.
Find Mari-Liis Lille on Instagram HERE.
If you enjoy crochet pattern books, you can check out some more of my crochet book reviews on my blog:
