Hey y’all, in this post, I’ll be talking about my favourite yarn and thread to use for amigurumi. You’ll find my recommendations for crochet hooks here, and my recommendations for miscellaneous tools for amigurumi here.

Note: I live in Canada, so majority of the information and stores I mention will be specifically North American.

Disclosure: Some of the links below are affiliate links. This means that, at no additional costs to you, I will earn a commission if you click through and make a purchase. You can read a little more about that here! I also wanted to just quickly add that these are things that I have been using waaaay before I became an affiliate.

My Recommendation for Yarn

WeCrochet Shine Sport Yarn

This is my favourite yarn to use! I made my wedding dress with Shine and it’s also my go to when creating ornaments! It also comes in Worsted weight.

What I love about this yarn:

• It’s honestly just so beautiful. Like the name suggests, the yarn itself has a bit of a shine to it (think silky, not glittery).
• It’s a dream to work with. The yarn is smooth, soft, and doesn’t split easily. I personally find that the texture of the yarn helps me crochet faster because the yarn just glides through and doesn’t catch on my hook as often.
• The finished items are always so soft to the touch. It’s much softer than cotton yarn but a lot less textured than acrylic.
• It comes in an array of bright, beautiful colours and a few staple neutrals. The bright colours are absolutely gorgeous and it’s not something you’ll find elsewhere when looking for yarn with the texture Shine has.
• It doesn’t pill up. For something so soft, it doesn’t pill. At most, after a few washes, the item just looks a bit fuzzier.

What I don’t like about this yarn:

• The price. It’s pricier per yard/gram when compared to most acrylic or cotton yarns.
• The colours are pretty limited. The yarn only comes in 30 colours, and most of them are brights. And while bright colours are beautiful, it’s not always easy to colour-match for projects.
• You have to get this online. It’s not easy to find locally for me, so whenever I run out of colours, I have to place an order online.

Where can you purchase Shine?

The WeCrochet site! You’ll find sales for certain colours here and there, but without a sale, these will cost you $3.99USD per 50g skein.

Paintbox Yarns Cotton Aran

This is my go to yarn when creating slightly bigger toys.

What I love about this yarn:

• It comes in 48 (used to be 56) colours! Thicker cotton yarn doesn’t often come with this many options for colours, so it’s nice to have colours to play around with when creating bigger toys.
• It’s affordable! It’s almost always on sale on LoveCrafts. And if it’s not, you’ll probably be able to find a coupon code somewhere.
• When colours go out of stock, they get restocked fairly quickly.
• It’s quite soft for cotton yarn.
• Stitch definition when working with this yarn is beautiful. I personally love seeing my stitches very clearly, so this is something I really like about Paintbox Yarns Cotton Aran.

What I don’t like about this yarn:

• They discontinue colours here and there. This is mainly a frustration I have about this yarn as an amigurumi designer. They’ve made so many beautiful colours that they no longer create. So you’ll sometimes notice that the colours I mention in older posts are not being sold anymore.
• The yarn splits quite easily. The strands separate very easily, so it leads to splitting here and there. This makes it a bit of a nightmare to frog (ripping your stitches out if you make a mistake) as doing so basically loosens up the yarn and makes it more difficult to work with. The best way to deal with the splitting is to use a good hook (Clover Amours are great when working with yarn that splits easily).
• It’s not easy to find locally. I have stumbled across local yarn stores that stock some colours of Paintbox, but it’s pretty rare.

Where can you purchase Paintbox Yarns?

Paintbox Yarns Cotton Aran can be found on LoveCrafts! It’s almost always on sale on the LoveCrafts site (varies between 20-40% off).

Scheepjes Catona Yarn

This is very new to my stash, but I am OBSESSED. I bought every single colour I could find, and I’m glad I did!

What I love about this yarn:

• It comes in SO many colours, which makes colour matching for projects an absolute dream. I don’t exactly know how many colours the Scheepjes Catona comes in, but I do know it’s more than 100. Having this many colour options is always a good thing for amigurumi.
• The colours are freaking delicious.
• It’s a mercerized cotton yarn, which means it’s shinier and sturdier than regular old cotton yarn. This makes it super smooth to crochet with.
• Stitch definition when working with this yarn is beautiful.

What I don’t like about this yarn:

• It’s difficult to find all the colours. Because there are so many colours, most stores don’t carry all of them. I had to place multiple orders online in order to get the colours I wanted as they became available.
• Most of the colours only come in the tiny 25g skein. For someone like me who uses a lot of yarn, I’m not a fan of having to get multiple skeins of one colour just to have enough for a project.
• The colour choices for the 25g and 50g skeins are different. This makes for more colour options, but it also means you’ll have different sized skeins in your yarn stash. This isn’t something that bothers me a lot, but it does make my yarn stash organization a little more difficult.
• The weight of the yarn is a little thin, which kind of limits the size of the projects I can create.

Where can you purchase Scheepjes Catona?

• You’ll find both the 25g and the 50g on LoveCrafts. LoveCrafts carries almost all the colours, but they’re not always in stock. Bonus: they often have Scheepjes Catona on sale!
• Local yarn stores. The Scheepjes site allows you to search your area for stores that locally stock their yarn. Through their map, I was able to find a store nearby (shout out to Artisanthropy in Whitby, ON! They had so many colours and the lady at the cashier was so nice!) to stock up on colours that were not available on the LoveCrafts site.

My Recommendation for Lace Weight Yarn/ Thread

DMC Perle Cotton No. 5

This is my favourite lace weight yarn/thread to make tiny amigurumi with.

What I love about this thread:

• It’s mercerized, so it has a beautiful sheen and is really soft to the touch.
• It doesn’t split the way regular embroidery floss does, which makes it easier to work with when creating tiny ami.
• It comes in soooo many gorgeous colours.
• It’s easy to find at local craft stores.

What I don’t like about this thread:

• It’s a little bit pricey when you think about the amount of thread you get for the price.
• You have to wind it into a ball manually before you can start working with it. It’s not a huge deal to me, but it can get tedious.

Where can you purchase DMC Perle Cotton?

• LoveCrafts! They have 262 shades on their site!
• Your local Michael’s or craft store. I find that the colour options are pretty limited at some Michael’s stores, so you may have a difficult time finding specific colours.

DMC 6-Strand Embroidery Floss

This is my go-to floss for embroidering my amigurumi. I’ll also sometimes use this for tiny ami if I don’t have specific colours of the Perle Cotton on hand.

What I love about this thread:

• It comes in 500 colours. You can literally colour match it to anything and everything.
• It’s very affordable.
• It’s versatile. You can use this for traditional embroidery, to use as yarn for tiny amigurumi, to make bracelets with, etc.
• You can split the strands to use less strands to create finer details for the embroidery on your amigurumi.

What I don’t like about this thread:

• It’s not the best thread to use for tiny amigurumi because it’s designed to be split very easily.
• To keep it from tangling, you have to wind it manually before you start working with it. I use these cards to wind my thread onto to keep them organized.

Where can you purchase DMC 6-Strand Embroidery Floss?

• The LoveCrafts website.
• Your local Michael’s or craft stores. I love going in to my local Michael’s to look at the hundreds of different colours of thread.

WeCrochet Curio #10

This is my favourite crochet thread to work with for lace work and for super tiny amigurumi. The weight of the thread is finer than the Perle Cotton, so the amigurumi turns out even tinier.

What I love about this thread:

• You get a lot for your money. Each ball of yarn is 100g and costs between $3.59 to $4.49USD and will last you forever.
• It’s mercerized cotton, which means it’s super glossy and beautiful.

What I don’t like about this thread:

• The colour choices are quite limited. There are only 22 colours available, and they’re mostly brights.
• They discontinue some colours to introduce new ones, so you won’t be able to find some of the more muted colours they used to produce. You’ll notice from my tiny floral bouquet that most of the colours I created the original bouquet with no longer exist.

Where can you purchase Curio #10?

You will be able to purchase this on the WeCrochet site!

Have you tried any of the yarn/thread I mentioned in this post? What’s your favourite yarn to use? Drop me some recommendations of your own in the comments below! 🙂