#weebo

WHAT YOU NEED

Materials:

Yarn: Orange, white, dark brown, buff

For the one in the photos, I used size 3/DK yarn made of cotton.

Crochet hook or hooks

For the one in the photos, I used a size C/2.75 mm hook.

You can make the plush bigger or smaller by changing the hook size and the yarn size as you see fit.

Safety eyes (2)

Stuffing

Cardboard (for the inner feet)

Embellishments for the toenails: either needle felting supplies or yarn embroidery supplies

This can be as simple as a yarn needle and some gray or beige yarn

I needle-felted it, so that would be a felting needle, a foam work pad, and some gray or beige felting fiber

General crochet accessories (pins, yarn scissors, yarn needle, stitch markers, etc.)

Knowledge:

Single crochet (sc), magic ring (MR), increase (inc), decrease (dec), chain (ch), fasten off

I make some references to slip stitches and invisible finishes; those are all optional

Basic plushie sewing (I don't tell you when to attach yarn or when to knot it or hide it)

I'm not using a specific named stitch when sewing the pieces together. If you like using specific named stitches, you'll probably end up using whip stitches and/or ladder stitches, but if you're already familiar with those terms, you're experienced enough to figure this all out anyway.

Body (Orange cap)

First we're going to make the big orange mushroom cap. This is pretty simple. Use orange yarn.

MR 6 (6)

Inc 6 (12)

(sc, inc) x6 (18)

(sc 2, inc) x6 (24)

(sc 3, inc) x6 (30)

(sc 4, inc) x6 (36)

(sc 5, inc) x6 (42)

Sc around (42)

(sc 6, inc) x6 (48)

10-12.  sc around (48) (3 rds)

13. Back loops only this round: sc around (48)

14. (sc 6, dec) around (42)

15. (sc 5, dec) around (36)

16. (sc 4, dec) around (30)

17. (sc 1, dec) around (20). Note that this is a faster decrease than we've been doing. Fasten off. I found it easier to attach the white ring first before stuffing the orange cap, but you can stuff it when you find it to be convenient.

Images of the side and underside of the finished orange cap.

White Ring

For the white ring around the body, use white yarn. Make a magic ring with 6 sc (so MR 6), then just SC around for approximately 52 rounds, until the tube that you make is long enough to wrap all the way around the orange cap. Depending on how tight your stitches are and so on, this may be a little more or a little less than 52 rounds, but that's what it was for me. As you go, periodically measure the tube against the orange cap to see when it's going to fit around nicely. You're going to sew it to the cap roughly at where the back loop only round was, but this can be adjusted as you see fit.

Image of the white tube stretched out

Fasten off at the end with a long tail for sewing; you can finish with a slip stitch or an invisible finish but it won't really matter since you're sewing it to itself to make a loop.

When I made mine, I sewed it to the body right after making it. You might choose to also leave this step for last, so that you have more room to work on the underside. I don't think that will make a huge difference.

There's no need to stuff the ring unless you REALLY want to, but I wouldn't.

Images of the white ring stitched to the orange cap

Foot (make four)

Use dark brown yarn. The toenails can be embroidered on or needle-felted on; use beige or gray material. I suppose you could even cut them out of premade felt or premade fabric and glue or sew them on if that's what you really want; point is, they're not directly part of the crocheting process. In the photos, mine are needle-felted on. (If you have a felting needle, it's very easy; just stab your felting fiber into the right approximate shape, position it on the doll, and stab it repeatedly until it holds itself in place.)

Chain 5, turn. Sc 3, 3 together in next sc so you're moving around to the opposite side of the chain row, skip 1, sc 2, inc (10) (The skip 1 part is always a little weird for me because I didn't realize I was doing it until the third or fourth foot, but as long as you end up with 10 stitches in your row, you're good. The goal is to be stitching in the round but to make it kind of oblong instead of a perfect circle, hence why we're using a chain instead of a magic ring.)

Image of going around the chain to the opposite side

Image of row 1 completed

2. Inc, sc 2, inc, sc, inc, 2 sc, inc, sc (14)

3. Inc, sc 2, inc, sc, inc, sc, inc, sc 2, inc, sc, inc, sc (20)

4. Back loops only for this round: sc around (20)

5-7.  Sc around (20) (3 rounds).

NOTE: After the first or second of these, if you're using cardboard to stiffen the feet to make it stand up more easily, this is a good time to trace and cut out the cardboard (I used two layers; do what feels right for the materials you have on hand) and stick it inside the foot. Make sure you tuck in the initial end of the yarn before you add the cardboard or else doing so will get annoying.

8. Sc, dec, sc 3, dec, sc 3, dec, sc 3, dec, sc 2 (16)

NOTE: If you're embroidering (rather than needle felting) the toenails, now is a good time to do that. If you're needle felting them, wait until after you've stuffed the foot.

9. Sc around (16)

NOTE: Speaking of stuffing the foot, this is when I started doing that, then stuff as you go until you start combining the feet in row 12.

10. (sc 2, dec)  x4 (12)

11. Sc around (12). For the first three feet, fasten off. For the fourth foot, don't cut the yarn yet.

12. Once you have all four feet (with toenails, however you're choosing to do them), set them together on your workspace clustered in a square. Each foot should slope slightly (i.e., they're not perfectly symmetrical); position them so that the narrower parts are all together in the center.

Image of the feet arranged and pinned

12 cont. Pin the feet in place to each other to hold them steady; make sure the bottoms are all flat. I left the pins in until after I finished sewing them to the underside. Go back to your active loop and crochet around the four feet so they're all together in one round.

Image of crocheting the feet together

12 cont. You don't really need to count specific numbers of stitches at this point; a few of the existing stitches aren't going to get used because you're just going around the outsides. See the picture. SC around for one full round and end your round near but not at a corner (if your feet are in a square and you imagine the square as a clock, it's at about 10:00 or 2:00; see picture). Our goal now is to make one end of this taller so that the cap ends up peeking up at an angle.

Image of approximately where you'll finish row 12

13. Mark where you ended and then chain 1 and turn. Going in the opposite direction from before, sc across until you get to roughly the mirrored position. See diagram. (Diagram assumes right-handed crochet. For left-handed crochet, mirror it, i.e., you're going counterclockwise instead of clockwise when you go "backwards.")

14. Mark where you ended. Chain 1 and turn. Sc all the way around the entire thing now. When you're at the "shelf" between row 12 and the raised part of row 13+, do a decrease down (or up) the side; see photo. Go a stitch or two past where you started (so that you've done the decrease up the shelf as well as down it) and fasten off, leaving a long tail for sewing. You can finish with a slip stitch or an invisible finish but it's not critical. Image of doing a decrease down the side of the shelf

Underside Use buff (or tan/beige/taupe/etc.) yarn. Our goal here is to make a really floppy circle, so we're going to use a huge number of increases. This absolutely will not lay flat, and it isn't supposed to! It's specifically supposed to be wrinkly and saggy, as is the eventual fate of all of our bottoms. 1. MR 6 2. Inc 6 (12) 3. Inc 12 (24) 4. Inc 24 (48) 5. (Sc 1, inc) around (72) 6. (sc 1, inc) around (108) 7. (sc 17, inc) around (114) 8. (sc 18, inc) around (120) 9. (sc 9, inc) around (132). Fasten off. If you want to be fancy and leave a long tail for sewing the underside to the orange cap, you absolutely can do that. I tried to do that and eventually ended up cutting it off because it kept getting in the way as I was sewing the feet to the underside, so if you tend to have problems with yarn getting tangled when you sew, maybe leave it short.

Image of the floppy underside measured against the body

Assembly • Position the feet (which should be a single unit now) in the center of the underside and stitch them on. Because of the raised portion from rows 13-14, the underside will be kind of at an angle. Be careful to keep the feet centered; because the underside is so floppy, it's really easy to accidentally get shifted around if you're not careful. Make sure that the feet all stand mostly flat on the ground but that the underside is tilted.

Image of the underside attached to the feet at an angle

• Position the body on the underside and use a lot of pins to hold it in place. Basically, the places where you put pins will end up getting stitched to the body and the places between the pins will be big floppy wrinkles that fold in on themselves.

Image of the underside being pinned to the body and forming the wrinkles

The front of the doll is the part where the cap is raised (where you built the extra "shelf" on the feet). Attach safety eyes to the underside facing the front. Make sure that when you re-pin this, the eyes are mostly flat and not folded into a wrinkle.

Image of putting the safety eyes on the front

• Sew the underside to the cap, and sew the wrinkles to themselves so that you don't have any openings. If you haven't done so already, sew the white ring to the orange cap (in the photos, I did that first, but I can understand why you might choose otherwise).