Crochet a (Perfect) Flat Circle

November 22, 2016

Making a perfect flat circle is not always easy. There are a lot of things to consider. Most blogs only cover a small part of this exercise. Therefor I've collected some good guides and tutorials for you.

With this in hand, you should know the most important things, there is to know about a (perfect) flat circle.

Chart - how to crochet a perfect flat circle

BASICS

Magic Ring

Magic Circle
The first thing to know is how to make a magic ring. There are a lot of magic ring versions out there. The simplest version is easy to learn. You wrap the yarn around your fingers once. See the image. A great 4-image-only tutorial is Tatsiana's from www.lillabjorncrochet.com. If you want a movie, then Moogly has a very similar version here.

A more complex version might take some effort to learn. You wrap the yarn around your fingers twice. This version is more safe in the way, that it is harder - if not impossible - to pull apart afterwards.

Btw: You don't have to make a magic ring. You could just make a little circle of chains. But once learned, the magic ring improves your work.

First Round and Increasing

The next thing to know is how to increase. It doesn't matter if you crochet in a spiral or not. One of the best guides here is short and explains, what is going on. It is 6 Hacks to Crochet a Circle That Actually Lies Flat on www.craftsy.com by Kathryn Senior.

Number of Stitches to Increase with
You could actually start with any number of stitches in the magic ring. The important thing here is:
how many increases you do in each round.

So, in other words: It gets a lot easier, if you start with a number of stitches, that makes it easy to do evenly distributed increases.

Sometimes your yarn and hook allow you to increase a lot more (or less) than the rules of thumb. In some patterns, it is even required of you, to increase with more or less stitches to achieve a special need or look.

Spiral or Not?

By this point you have probably already decided whether to crochet in a spiral or do it round by round. A lot of amigurumi designers fancy the spiral. That way you don't have to deal with ugly looking starts and ends of each round more than necessary. Though for color-changes, you might still want to learn the tips about making the start/end invisible. So read on...

BEAUTIFY

These steps are purely optional. BUT, they can improve your work a lot, when used at the proper times.

For instance: a lot of amigurumi designers exclude these tips from their patterns to make the patterns simpler. That doesn't prevent YOU from using the techniques :)

Advanced Increase

Or how to avoid an odd hexagon circle.
Crochet Odd Hexagon Circle
When you increase round after round, your single crochet circle might look more like a hexagon than a circle. It happens, if your increasing points are right on top of each other. Sometimes it doesn't matter - or is even an advantage. Sometimes you want to avoid this.

Spincushions tells you how to avoid an odd looking circle, by tweaking the places you increase.

Cara Medus suggests an easier way of the same technique, if you work in a spiral. You simply 'move' your increase point one stitch per round.

Start A Round with a Fake Stitch

If you crochet in the rounds (not spiral), then it might be visible, where you start each round. It will often show, if you start with two chains in a round of double crochet stitches.

Avoid the chain stitches at the beginning of a round by doing a fake stitch instead. You can do fake stitches on everything from half double crochet and larger. See my post about fake stitches here.

End a Round with a Seamless / Invisible join

Even if you work in the spiral, you might need to know how to end your perfect circle. And if you work round by round, it sometimes shows, if you end the round with a slip stitch.

Kathryn Senior from www.craftsy.com also wrote about a seamless join in the article, I mentioned above: 6 Hacks to Crochet a Circle That Actually Lies Flat. It is a method, where you cut the yarn and sew in the end, so it looks like the top of a stitch. This method is mostly suitable, when you change color after each round.
If you are more into videos. Moogly made a nice video tutorial for the same seamless join.

How to end a circle?
How to end the circle?

Another invisible join is a bit more complicated. You pull your loop to the back of the work and then work it back in place. Mrs. M. shows it very neatly with both images and video. However, please notice that this method doesn't look quite as good from the back.

A third technique is shown in a video by Deja Jetmir on her Crochet Ever After blog. She basically does a tight slip stitch plus a tight chain. Then she starts the new round in the same stitch she uses to join.

I have a fourth method, but that needs its own blog post. So I'll have to share it with you later.

There are other methods out there. I don't think one method will suit all projects. Look around, in case the mentioned techniques do not cover your needs.

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