Crochet Walrus Amigurumi Pattern For Christmas Free

Sew two cream lobes onto this crochet walrus amigurumi and the face is done. Chenille builds the body fast and hides uneven stitches, so the muzzle is the only part needing care.

The muzzle is two cream lobes side by side on this crochet walrus amigurumi pattern for christmas free, with a large black nose sitting where they meet and two small tusks below. The body is a tapered chenille shape that narrows to a small tail at the top, with flat flippers at the sides. Two safety eyes go above the muzzle. Sew the muzzle lobes before stuffing, since getting a needle into a firm chenille body afterwards is a struggle.

Crochet Walrus Christmas Amigurumi

Hand a six-year-old something round and heavy and they hold it with both hands. That is what this one is built for. The body is a single stuffed shape with no wired limbs and nothing small enough to work loose in a coat pocket, so it survives a party bag, a bus ride and being sat on. The fiddly parts are the double-cup snout, two skinny tusks and a tail that splits into flippers, and none of them are actually hard. Work it once at your own pace. The sixth one will take you half as long as the first.

Christmas Countdown Math

• One walrus, start to finish: four to five hours for a confident maker, closer to six if the taco fold is new to you. Two evenings.
• A batch of six: roughly twenty hours, and that is with the speed you pick up around number three. Spread over ten nights at two hours a night, it lands comfortably.
• A class set of twenty-four: five weeks at an hour most evenings. Start in the second week of November and you are not rushing anyone.
• Latest sensible start for a single gift: the weekend before. Latest for six: ten days out. Latest for a class set: five weeks, and buy all the yarn on day one so the dye lots match.
• The tusks and the snout eat more time than the number of rounds suggests. Budget an extra half hour per walrus for sewing and pinning that you did not plan for.

Safety First

This section sits here rather than at the bottom because it changes what you buy, not just what you do at the end.

• Under three years old, or any doubt at all about the recipient’s age: skip the safety eyes entirely. Embroider them in black yarn instead, working the stitches through the head and out the back before you close the body, then pull them snug and bury the tail deep in the stuffing. An embroidered eye cannot be levered out with a thumbnail. A safety eye can, and a walrus this size gets carried by the face.
• Party bags, treat bags, classroom gift piles and church fair tables: embroider. You will not know who ends up holding it, and a younger sibling always ends up holding it. This is the single most common way a well-made toy becomes a problem.
• If you do use safety eyes because the walrus is going to an older child or an adult, use 8mm, seat them properly and wash the backs on until they click twice. Insert them before you stuff. Once the head is packed firm you cannot get a hand inside to fit the washer, and gluing a loose eye back in is not a fix.
• Tusks: sew them down along their whole seam, not just at the tip. A tusk tacked on with three stitches is a chew hazard on a wobbly join. Go all the way round the base twice.
• Stuffing: use polyester fibrefill only. Never rice, beans, pellets or dried lavender in a toy that a small child will hold, and never anything that turns to dust when it gets damp.
• Yarn choice: a smooth acrylic or cotton for anything going to a child. Avoid mohair, boucle and anything with a long shed on it.

Making These for a Group

Twenty-four of anything changes the job. A few things worth knowing before you start.

• Yarn for twelve: budget around 1,200 to 1,500 metres of brown worsted, plus one small ball of off-white that will cover all twenty-four tusks with plenty spare. Black is embroidery only, a few metres total.
• Buy brown in one dye lot. Two walruses side by side on a classroom shelf in slightly different browns looks like a mistake, even when nobody can say why.
• Name tags: a small crochet or fabric tag sewn into the back seam where the tail splits works better than anything hanging off a ribbon, which comes off in a bag within a day. Alternatively, work a single round of a different colour at the very base of the body so each child recognises their own by its foot colour.
• Make all the tusks first, in one sitting, while you watch something. They are the piece you will otherwise put off, and forty-eight identical little tubes is a genuinely calming job once you are in it.
• Keep one finished walrus back as the reference model. When batch nine looks slightly wrong, you want something to hold it up against.

What You Need

• Worsted weight yarn in brown, the main colour, roughly 100 to 130 metres per walrus
• Worsted weight yarn in off-white or cream for the tusks, a small amount
• Black yarn for the embroidered nose, and for the eyes if you are embroidering those too
• 3.00 mm hook for the body, head and snout
• 2.75 mm hook for the tusks, which keeps them dense enough that no stuffing shows through
• Safety eyes, 8mm, only if the recipient is old enough
• Polyester fibrefill
• Tapestry needle, stitch markers, scissors

Abbreviations

• st, sts: stitch, stitches
• ch: chain
• sc: single crochet
• inc: increase, meaning 2 sc worked into the same stitch
• dec: decrease, meaning 2 stitches worked together as one
• rnd, rnds: round, rounds
• sl st: slip stitch

The whole pattern is worked in continuous rounds unless a bullet tells you otherwise. Do not join or chain up. Move your marker every round.

Pieces List

• Snout: 2 cups, worked separately then joined and finished as one piece
• Tusks: 2, worked in off-white
• Body and head: 1, worked as a single piece from the base up
• Tail and back flippers: 1, worked directly from the body after the split, ending in 2 flippers
• Nose: embroidered, not a separate piece
• No front flippers in this design. The shape reads as a walrus without them, and adding a pair means inventing placement the original never specifies.

The Pattern

Snout, Cup One

• Rnd 1: 6 sc in a magic ring (6)
• Rnd 2: inc in every st around (12)
• Rnd 3: (sc, inc) x 6 (18)
• Rnd 4: (sc 2, inc) x 6 (24). At this point the piece should still lie flat on the table like a coaster, not cup or ruffle. If it cups already, your tension is tight, which is fine here as long as you keep it consistent for cup two.
• Rnds 5 to 7: sc around (24). The straight rounds pull the edge upright. By the end of Rnd 7 you want something the depth and stiffness of a bottle cap, sides standing on their own, not flopping.
• Sl st into the next st, snip and fasten off. Weave the end in now.

Snout, Cup Two

• Rnds 1 to 7: work exactly as Cup One (24)
• Do not fasten off. Leave the loop live on your hook.
• Hold both cups next to each other, open sides up, before you go further. They should be the same height and the same diameter. Two cups that do not match will give you a lopsided snout that no amount of stuffing corrects.

Joining the Cups

• Keeping the live loop from Cup Two on your hook, work 1 sc into any stitch along Rnd 7 of Cup One. The two cups are now locked together at one point.
• Rnd 8: sc all the way around the outer edge of both cups, treating them as one continuous round (48). The rim now reads as a figure eight, pinched at the join. That pinch is the line between the two lips, so do not try to flatten it out.
• Rnd 9: (dec, sc 5, dec, sc 6, dec, sc 5, dec) x 2 (40)
• Rnd 10: dec, (sc 4, dec) x 3, dec, (sc 4, dec) x 3 (32)
• Rnd 11: (dec, sc 3, dec, sc 2, dec, sc 3, dec) x 2 (24). Two distinct domes should be forming with a valley running between them. Look at it side on. If you see one wide oval instead of two bumps, your decreases have drifted off the join line.
• Rnd 12: (dec, sc, dec, sc 2, dec, sc, dec) x 2 (16)
• Stuff both halves firmly now, one at a time, before the opening closes. Push stuffing into each dome separately so neither collapses into the other.
• Rnd 13: dec x 8 (8)
• Sl st into the next st and snip, leaving a long tail for sewing. Thread the tail through the front loops of the remaining stitches, pull tight, and the back closes flat.
• Take a scrap strand of brown and stitch across the small gap where the two cups meet at the centre, pulling it just tight enough to define the split. This is the detail that turns two lumps into a muzzle.

Tusks, Make 2

• Switch to the 2.75 mm hook and off-white yarn.
• Rnd 1: 5 sc in a magic ring (5)
• Rnds 2 to 8: sc around (5). You are making a tube about the width of a pencil and roughly 2.5 cm long. It will curve slightly on its own. Let it. Do not stuff it, and do not try to straighten it.
• Fasten off with a sl st, leaving a long tail for sewing.

Body and Head

• Switch back to brown and the 3.00 mm hook. This is worked from the base of the body upward as one piece.
• Rnd 1: 6 sc in a magic ring (6)
• Rnd 2: inc in every st around (12)
• Rnd 3: (sc, inc) x 6 (18)
• Rnd 4: (sc 2, inc) x 6 (24)
• Rnd 5: (sc 3, inc) x 6 (30)
• Rnd 6: (sc 4, inc) x 6 (36). Still a flat disc at this stage, about the size of a drinks coaster. Any cupping now means you will fight the shape for the next ten rounds, so loosen off if it is doming.
• Rnd 7: (sc 5, inc) x 6 (42)
• Rnd 8: (sc 6, inc) x 6 (48)
• Rnd 9: (sc 7, inc) x 6 (54)
• Rnd 10: (sc 8, inc) x 6 (60)
• Rnd 11: (sc 9, inc) x 6 (66)
• Rnd 12: (sc 10, inc) x 6 (72)
• Rnd 13: (sc 11, inc) x 6 (78)
• Rnd 14: (sc 12, inc) x 6 (84)
• Rnd 15: (sc 13, inc) x 6 (90)
• Rnd 16: (sc 14, inc) x 6 (96). This is the widest the piece ever gets, a large flat round about the size of a side plate. It should sit down on the table with no waves in the edge. Waves mean too many increases somewhere and they will not stuff out.
• Rnd 17: sc in the next 64 sts, then stop. Place a marker in the first stitch you made this round so you can find your way back to it.

The Taco Fold

• Slip your hook out of the loop and hold it somewhere safe, or use a locking marker.
• Fold the whole circle in half, right side facing inward, the way you would fold a taco.
• Line up the first and last stitches of the unworked section so the piece divides into two openings: a large one that becomes the head and body, and a smaller pocket at the back that becomes the tail and flippers.
• Put your hook back into the live loop and carry on around the larger opening only. Leave the back pocket alone for now.
• Rnds 18 to 37: sc around the larger opening (56).
• Twenty straight rounds is a long stretch of nothing happening. That is the point. The body needs the height, and the shape only appears when you start decreasing at the top.
• Stop at the end of Rnd 37 and read the next section before you go on. Eyes go in here.

Eyes, Before You Stuff

• Pin the finished snout onto the front of the body now, roughly a third of the way down from the open top edge, and use it to judge where the eyes sit.
• Mark the two eye positions with scrap yarn, one on each side just above and slightly out from the snout, four to six stitches apart depending on how wide you want the face.
• If you are using safety eyes: insert both now, reach in through the open top, and wash the backs on until they click home. Once you stuff, you cannot reach.
• If you are embroidering: work them now too, while you can get a needle in from the inside and bury the ends deep.
• Then unpin the snout and set it aside. It gets sewn on at the very end.

Closing the Head

• Rnd 38: (sc 5, dec) x 8 (48)
• Rnd 39: sc around (48)
• Rnd 40: (sc 4, dec) x 8 (40). Start stuffing here and keep adding as you go. The lower body wants to be firm enough that the walrus sits upright on a shelf without slumping.
• Rnd 41: sc around (40)
• Rnd 42: (sc 3, dec) x 8 (32)
• Rnd 43: sc around (32)
• Rnd 44: (sc 2, dec) x 8 (24). The top should be curving in like the shoulder of a jar now. Add the last of the stuffing before the hole gets too small for your fingers.
• Rnd 45: sc around (24)
• Rnd 46: (sc, dec) x 8 (16)
• Rnd 47: dec x 8 (8)
• Fasten off, thread the tail through the front loops of the remaining stitches, pull tight and knot off inside. Bury the end in the stuffing.

Tail and Back Flippers

• Rejoin brown yarn at the corner of the back seam, at the edge of the tail opening left by the fold.
• Rnd 1: sc around the tail opening (32)
• Rnd 2: (sc 6, dec) x 4 (28)
• Rnd 3: (sc 5, dec) x 4 (24). The pocket should now be drawing in to a wide, flattish tube sitting low at the back. Do not stuff this part at all.
• Divide the 24 stitches evenly into two sets of 12. Each set becomes one flipper.
• Rnd 4: sc in the next 12 sts only, leaving the other 12 unworked (12)
• Rnd 5: hold the two sides of that flipper flat together and sc across the edge through both layers to close it into a flat webbed shape.
• Repeat Rnds 4 and 5 across the remaining 12 stitches for the second flipper.
• Fasten off both and weave the ends inside the body.

Stuffing

Firm in the body, firm in the snout, nothing at all in the tusks or the flippers.

• The lower body carries the weight, so pack it hard. A walrus that is understuffed at the base tips forward onto its face on a flat shelf, which is exactly where it will spend December. Work the stuffing into the corners around the fold before you close the head, because that is the spot everyone forgets and it shows as a dent in the back.
• The snout wants to be dense. Two loosely stuffed cups sag into one blob within a week of being handled. Stuff each dome separately and slightly harder than feels necessary.
• Over-stuffing shows in one place: the increase rounds on the body, where the stitches pull open and white fibrefill grins through the gaps. If you can see stuffing through the fabric, take a little out or drop a hook size next time.

Assembly

• Pin the snout to the front of the head first, roughly a third of the way down from the top, and look at it from across the room before you commit. Snout placement is the whole face. Too high reads as a bear, too low reads as sad.
• Sew the snout down with a whip stitch, working right around the base. Take small stitches and keep them close to the snout edge so they disappear.
• Sew the tusks to the underside of the snout, on the rounded lower edge of each cup, around Rnds 2 to 3. They point down and slightly outward. Stitch all the way around each base, twice.
• Embroider the nose in black yarn as a small triangle sitting right above where the tusks meet, at the centre valley between the two cups.
• Weave every remaining end into the body cavity, not along the surface. Ends buried in stuffing never work their way out.

The Character Dial: Rustic or Bright

Two directions, and the choice is worth making deliberately before you buy yarn rather than after.

• Rustic. Heathered or tweed brown, the sort with flecks of oatmeal and rust running through it. Cream tusks rather than white. Embroidered eyes in dark brown instead of black, worked slightly smaller than you think, which gives a sleepier face than safety eyes ever manage. Add a length of jute twine or a strip of linen tied around the neck, knotted at the side rather than the front. Skip the shine entirely. If you want something Christmassy on it, use a single sprig of dried greenery stitched to the twine instead of a bow. This version looks correct sitting on a wooden shelf next to pinecones and it stays out well past January without looking like a leftover.
• Bright. Clear mid-brown with no heather in it, or push further and work the whole walrus in soft grey. Pure white tusks. Add a tiny red crochet scarf, three stitches wide and long enough to wrap once with the ends hanging, in a red that actually reads as red under a Christmas tree light. Rosy cheeks, worked as two small satin stitch patches in pink just below the eyes, or brushed on with a dab of blusher and a cotton bud if you prefer. Bigger eyes set slightly closer together read as younger. A small crochet Santa hat sitting off to one side works better than one sitting straight, because the walrus has no ears to hold it level and everyone knows it.
• The dial is not only colour. The single biggest lever is eye spacing. Close together and low is a baby walrus. Wide apart and high is an old one who has seen things.

Colourways

• Driftwood and Snow. Pale grey-brown body, cream tusks, dark grey embroidered eyes. Reads as arctic rather than as a toy. Very good on a white shelf.
• Nutmeg Latte. Warm mid-brown body, oatmeal tusks, a caramel scarf. The safest of the four and the one that suits an adult recipient.
• Arctic Twilight. Slate blue-grey body, white tusks, a touch of silver or pale lilac in the scarf. Looks expensive for no extra effort.
• Peppermint Pop. Off-white body, white tusks, red and white striped scarf. Loud, and the one children pick every single time if you give them the choice.

Display Ideas

• The flat base and the two back flippers mean this one sits down properly, so it holds a shelf edge or a mantel without a stand. Put it at the end of a row so the tusks are visible in profile.
• Wooden dough bowl with a few pinecones and one walrus in the middle. Better than three, oddly. One large object in a bowl looks intentional, several look like storage.
• Tiered tray, bottom level. The walrus is too heavy visually for a top tier.
• Advent shelf or a windowsill with a run of cotton wool laid under it for snow. The weight keeps it from being knocked off by a curtain.
• Gift topper on a large box only, tied down with wide ribbon through the neck. On a small box it looks like the box is wearing the walrus.
• Classroom reading corner or a book shelf in a child’s room, where it doubles as a fairly effective bookend once the body is stuffed properly firm.
• Not a garland or a tree ornament. It is too heavy and the branch will droop. Hang something else.

After the Season

Store it loose, not squashed. A stuffed walrus packed at the bottom of a decorations box under a box of baubles comes out in November with a flat side that takes days to recover, and sometimes never quite does. Put it in a cotton bag or a pillowcase with room around it, near the top of the box, and add a stuffing sachet if your loft gets damp. Give it a shake and a light finger-comb when it comes out. If the snout has gone soft over the year, you can open two or three stitches at the back of the join, push in a little more fibrefill and close it up again in five minutes.

Quick Answers

• Can I give this to a one-year-old? Yes, but embroider the eyes and skip the safety eyes completely. Sew the tusks down around their whole base rather than just tacking them, and use a smooth acrylic or cotton yarn. Done that way it is a solid, one-piece toy with nothing to pull off.
• How do I wash it? Hand wash in cool water with a little mild detergent, squeeze rather than wring, and press it in a towel to get the bulk of the water out. Then let it dry standing upright for a day or two so the stuffing settles back into shape. Machine washing pushes fibrefill into lumps that you cannot redistribute afterwards, and the snout is the first part to go.
• The taco fold is confusing. What am I actually doing? You are folding a big open circle in half so that it becomes two openings instead of one. The larger one you keep crocheting to build the head and body. The smaller pocket you leave alone until later, and it becomes the tail. If you fold it and it does not look like two clear openings, unfold and try lining the first and last unworked stitches up again.
• Can I make it smaller for a party bag? Yes. Use a 2.5 mm hook with DK yarn and stop the body increases at Rnd 12 instead of Rnd 16, then work fewer straight rounds in the middle, around twelve instead of twenty. The decrease rounds will need adjusting to match your new count. It comes out roughly two thirds the size and takes about half the time, which matters a lot when you are making twenty of them.