Making your amigurumi stand up can be annoying, especially when you’re trying to pose it for pictures or showing it off as a decoration.

You balance it perfectly, then— it tumbles over and your shot is blurry and unusable. Your cat jumps up and swats at it, and it falls over after all that time you spent trying to get it to stay in place.

There are a few easy ways that can help your amigurumi stand or sit up straight. Most of them don’t require too much extra effort. Many use simple household items you may have lying around and are very DIY-friendly!

Wire

The majority of designers who pose their amigurumi tend to use wires. Wires come in different sizes known as gauges.

You can use wires to create armatures inside of your amigurumi, giving them a skeleton! These skeletons not only allow for stability, but posability, too!

Creating the right armature for your amigurumi is often trial and error. First and foremost, to keep anyone from getting poked by a stray wire, you have a couple choices.

One is to wrap the clipped ends with yarn, stuffing, or tape to blunt the ends. I have had success with regular clear tape and washi tape (since it’s what I had laying around). I have seen people use duct tape or electrical tape (this is a better idea as it is better at protecting anyone from getting poked).

A second way is to take double the length of wire and bend it within the body to create the skeleton. The clipped ends of the wire are inside the squishy body of the amigurumi and not at the ends of the limbs, protecting anyone from getting poked.

Bending and shaping the wire to create a skeleton is a bit harder than snipping and inserting the wires into the limbs, but it is safer. It is more stable as well since the amigurumi will have double the wire inside of it.

The thicker the wire, the harder it will be to bend and shape (unless you are incredibly strong) into the shape you want it to be. The higher the wire gauge number, the thinner it will be, e.g. a 4.11mm wire will have a gauge of 6, while a 0.911mm wire will have a gauge of 19.

While copper, brass and other nickel alloy wires are cheaper and easiest to bend, they can tarnish yarn or stuffing over time, giving it a greenish tint. While it may not be a big deal when stuffed inside of an amigurumi, it is something to keep in mind when choosing wires.

Stainless steel or floral wires are best if you want your projects to last for a longer time without much wear or tear. Stainless steel wires tend to be more expensive and harder to bend.

Floral wires are relatively cheap and easy to find, but they often come in smaller gauges. It is not as stable or stiff as copper or stainless steel wires, so you may find yourself doubling up in order to stabilize your amigurumi.

Pipe cleaners are a great choice for something that needs just a little bit of support and posability. They are the weakest out of all the wire choices listed, but they are the cheapest and most readily available.

They come in fun colors, too! They can also be added as extra embellishments such as antennas.

Weight

This may be the easiest hack to keep your amigurumi upright. All you’ll need is something with a bit of weight that you won’t miss!

Some people might discover that their amigurumi is tipping over because it’s top heavy. Maybe the design has the head bigger than the body, or the legs are way too thin to keep it up right.

You may not want to change the design because you love it so much, you can change how much you stuff it, or what you stuff it with.

You can use anything as a weight for your amigurumi. Some of the more popular choices are dried beans, rice, plastic pellets (poly pellets), marbles, small stones, pebbles, glass vase filler balls, and dried corn.

If you use any sort of perishable food for your weight, your amigurumi cannot be washed. Beans, rice, corn, and any other food can mold or start to sprout. It will only be able to be spot cleaned.

I personally do not recommend using food as weights for your amigurumi, especially if you are in a humid environment. If your amigurumi is not going to be played with (or will have a short lifespan), you could still use it.

I will still caution you away from using food as weights. If it’s all you have, then you can use what you can, but I would recommend using anything else besides perishables.

Because crochet naturally has holes in its finished product, I would recommend placing your weights into something (such as a pouch) without holes to hold it. Examples are a sock, pantyhose, tights, an old cutup t-shirt, or any other lightweight fabric that you can knot closed.

Even if you crochet tight enough that the holes are basically invisible, you should still use something to contain the weights. Larger weights such as rocks or marbles don’t need to be put in a fabric pouch, unless the holes are much bigger (such as using chunky yarn), but I would suggest getting into the habit regardless.

Stuff Firmly

You may just need to stuff the bottom more firmly than the top. Sometimes simply adding more stuffing to the legs or bottom is all you need to keep your amigurumi standing!

When stuffing firmly, make sure you don’t accidentally overstuff. You can typically tell that you’ve overstuffed your amigurumi when the stitches start stretching, you can see the stuffing, or your amigurumi’s shape becomes deformed.

My main suggestion is to make sure your amigurumi is stuffed firmly but not bursting at the seams.

If you want to know more about the best type of stuffing, I have some suggestions in this article! My favorite is regular polyfill (polyester fiberfill) due to its easy accessibility, inexpensive price, and the ease of use.

As I mentioned in my stuffing article, polyfill can shrink over time. It’s always best to stuff more than you think your amigurumi needs (but not too much!).

Foam

Sometimes less is more. Foam rods, or hair curlers/rollers, are perfect for creating stability, if you’re okay with limiting movement.

These foam rods are great for stabilizing the necks of amigurumi. Worried about overstuffing? Use a foam rod instead; you won’t need to stuff the neck at all! And it won’t droop over time.

They are fairly inexpensive and easy to find. Hair curlers come in different sizes, but they are often rather large. You may need to shave down the sides a bit to be able to make it neck-sized.

For larger amigurumi made out of blanket yarn, foam rods may or may not be big enough to keep the neck from becoming limp. If you can’t find one that’s big enough, you may just need to stuff as firmly as possible.

Cardboard & Plastic Mesh

Maybe you’ve firmly stuffed your amigurumi’s feet or bottom but still can’t get it to stand. Is the bottom bulging out, making it tip over?

Cardboard or plastic mesh canvas can be used to keep amigurumi upright. Before completing and stuffing your amigurumi, trace out a piece of cardboard or mesh and place it on the bottom of the feet to keep the stuffing from bulging.

This gives it a solid, flat surface to stand on. It also works great for sides that need a ridged look, or if you want to prevent sagging.

If you put cardboard in your amigurumi, you need to avoid getting it wet. Plastic mesh would be better for amigurumi that may need to be washed in the future, or if you live in a humid environment.

Starch

Wait, what? Stiffen your amigurumi? Yes! While this is often used for flat projects such as snowflakes or dollies, you can also use it for parts of your amigurumi.

YarnAndy has an awesome in-depth article about the different types of starches and what works best. From what she has discovered, starching does not work well on acrylic items. If your amigurumi is made out of acrylic yarn, starching isn’t a good option!

I wouldn’t recommend soaking your entire amigurumi in a starch solution, especially if you have stuffed it. The stuffing will become crunchy and shrink down, most likely becoming smelly and gross.

Starching is best done when you are able to block your items. While starching is an option, I wouldn’t necessarily recommend it. If it’s the only thing you have access to (or want to try it out), feel free to experiment.

Starching is best done for flat parts of your amigurumi that may need some help standing up and you don’t want to mess with shaping wires.

Stands

At times, the most obvious way is one of the easiest ways. Instead of worrying about creating a wire skeleton, making the bottom of your amigurumi heavier, or hoping you don’t overstuff, why don’t you just place your amigurumi on a stand to keep it, well, standing?

Obviously, if your amigurumi is not going to be used as decoration, you may want to choose a different option. Stands are best when the amigurumi are being observed rather than touched or constantly handled.

DIY Stand

One of the simplest ways to create a stand is to take a base and drill a hole into the bottom of it, take a long stick, then push it through the back of the amigurumi. Adjust to make it standing, and you’re done!

The best type of stick to use is one that is thin enough to hide behind the amigurumi but thick enough to hold its weight. A stick with a sharp end will let it push through the amigurumi better.

This will enlarge a hole in the back of your amigurumi. It isn’t a safe stand for small children to be around.

For smaller amigurumi, you can hot glue the bottom of it to a solid base, such as a thick cork coaster.

Armature Doll Stand

These doll stands are mainly used for sculpted figures or collectable dolls that are unable to stand up by themselves. If you’d rather not bother with shoving a stick into your amigurumi, you might want to check out these professional doll stands.

Lean against a wall

This is the easiest and cheapest way to keep an amigurumi standing. Don’t have time, money, or energy to create an entire base? Lean it against a wall! Quick, easy, and involves practically nothing.

Just for photos

Are you a designer or a seller who just needs your amigurumi to stand up for photos? In this case, you have a lot more less permanent options to choose from.

You can take a few sewing pins (or anything small with a round head at the end) and stick them into the back of the legs. This counterbalances the amigurumi, keeping it from tipping over too quickly.

I will also redirect you to the ‘lean against a wall’ portion of the article. If you can somehow decorate the wall it’s leaning against, you might not even notice that it needs help standing!

If you have some small knitting needles that are capped at the end with a stopper, you can use those as well. If you’re worried about the needles enlarging holes in your amigurumi – the needles will only be there for a few moments, and you can adjust the stitches back to its normal size within moments.

If you do use sewing pins, or need a part of the wall edited out, there are a few apps you can use. I personally use TouchRetouch or Snapseed.

TouchRetouch is an editing app available on both iOS and Android, but it is a paid app. It’s super easy to use, and edits photos quickly and neatly.

Snapseed is a free photo editor app available on both iOS and Android. While it may not be a robust as TouchRetouch or other photo editing apps, it’s a great starting place.