It’s so frustrating when you’ve created an adorable crochet stuffed animal only to have a woven-in tail pull out. Now you have a stubby little tail that’s going to be almost impossible to get inside, and it will likely fall out even faster next time.
I would make small amigurumi animals for my little brothers to play with and find this happening a lot. So I came up with a way to keep those tails from coming out! It also helps keep arms or legs you’ve already sewn onto a crochet animal from falling off.
There are two different ways to implement this trick. You can anchor in between two pieces, or you can anchor off to the side. I’ll explain the methods and differences in more detail below.
Anchoring Between Two Pieces
This anchoring method works best when you are attaching two pieces onto a crochet animal that have space inbetween them.
A few examples of this are when you sew on a pair of arms, a pair of legs, or a set of ears.
To anchor the two limbs together, begin by sewing on the first limb as usual. In the photos I’m using to demonstrate this technique, I’m sewing arms onto a crochet sloth. After sewing the limb on, poke your needle down into the base crochet piece. Come up at a point in between where you’re sewing the limbs on.
Pull through and leave this tail here for now.
Sew the second limb in place. Then, just as you did for the first limb, poke your needle down into the base crochet piece and come back up out of it. However, this time you’ll come back out of it at the same hole where you left your first yarn tail.
Now that you have the two tails poking out of the same hole, tie them in a knot. This will prevent the ends from being pulled back out of the body because you’ve anchored one arm to the other.
You’ve also ensured the ends aren’t loose on the inside because the yarn stretches straight across between the two limbs.
After your knot is tied, use a crochet hook or yarn needle to pull the tails of the knot out through another hole in the base crochet piece at least 1 inch away from your knot. Then cut these tails so they slip back inside the animal’s body. This helps ensure that the knot doesn’t become untied because the ends near it are too short.
And you now have two limbs anchored to each other!
This works wonderfully when your limbs are next to each other or directly across from another. But there are some cases where you have to add an extra step because your anchor is on the side of a piece instead of inbetween two pieces.
Anchor Off to the Side
This technique is needed if you’re sewing on only one piece or you’re adding an embroidered detail and don’t want it to get pulled out.
I’ll explain why this is necessary as I work through the steps of the process.
It starts out the same as the other anchoring process. You’ll have one tail exposed as you’re sewing on a snout, body, or tail or as you’re embroidering on a detail.
Then after you’ve finished sewing, you’ll bring the yarn tail back out of the main piece one stitch over from where your other tail is.
Normally we would’ve come out in that same stitch to create our anchor, but doing so here wouldn’t work.
If we were to tie a knot at that point, we’d have two strings “floating around” on the inside of the sloth’s arm with a knot at the end. This would still enable a child to pull at the stitching for the claws and loosen the yarn that we stitched on for the claws.
So instead, we add another step. Thread one of the yarn tails onto a needle. Then poke the needle through the stitch in between the two tails. You want to make sure you are splitting the yarn on the body here with your needle.
Now both of your tails should be coming out of the same hole. Tie the tails into a secure knot. Then use a crochet hook or yarn needle to pull the tails of the knot out through another hole in the base crochet piece at least 1 inch away from your knot. Then cut these tails so they slip back inside the animal’s body.
This now keeps that knot right where you tied it, so nobody can pull on the stitches and accidentally loosen them. It also keeps the ends inside of the crochet animal so that you don’t have any strange knots exposed on the outside.
Using this method will give your crochet pieces a finished, polished look while making them far more structurally sound. Now any crochet toys you make can stand the test of time, and the love of children, even better!
