The Mooshroom Hat

For everybody who’s ever wanted to wear a Minecraft Mooshroom on their head (or knows somebody who’d love a Mooshroom hat as a gift), this Instructables project is for you! (And really, who wouldn’t want to wear a giant, red, fungus-ridden cow on their head?) It’s a definite attention-getter at any convention.

I was inspired to do this because I made a light-up Christmas tree hat that was really popular, and I figured that if people liked wearing a lit-up tree on their head, then they wouldn’t mind wearing a cow there either. And, it’s probably obvious that I really enjoy Minecraft – I also made a Minecraft-themed candle-powered paper carousel.

Step 1: Materials You'll Need

You’ll need the items pictured above -- here's what it includes:

• Martha Stewart Crafts Knit & Weave Loom Kit. I used this specific loom/knitting kit because I won it in a contest, but you could probably use a different kit and adjust it to work (or, if you’re experienced at knitting, you could probably knit all of this without a kit). See the details in the steps for what loom pieces are needed.
• Red yarn, super bulky (size 6). I Bernat Blanket Soft & Cozy yarn (Cranberry 10705) because it was the closest in color that I could find at my local yarn shop. Any super bulky, mooshroom-colored yarn should work. The ball was 234 m, and I ended up needing a tiny bit from a second ball, but if you made the hat shorter you probably wouldn’t need a second ball.
• Scissors
• Piece of cardboard, at least 20 cm by 12 cm
• Tape
• Utility knife
• Printer and paper
• Glue for fabric and felt. I used Elmer’s Craft Bond Tacky Glue and it worked really well.
• Felt in the following colors: Black, white, pink, light gray, dark gray. Get one sheet of the black, white, and pink, and two sheets of light gray and dark gray each.
• Sewing pins and paperclips. This is for holding pieces in place before gluing them.
• For gluing: Heavy books (e.g., textbooks), paperback novels, binder clips, and sheets of paper (to protect the books from the glue).
• Ruler
• Polyester fiberfill
• Cardboard toilet paper tube or paper towel tube
• Somebody to laugh at you when you wear the hat!

Step 2: Knitting the Hat Base

Assembling the loom

Connect the loom pieces to form a long oval using four of the 12-hole, straight pieces and two of the 28-hole, semi-circular pieces. Insert a green peg into a hole (marking the start of the round) and then put a pink peg into every other hole going around the loom. See the pictures for details.

(The booklet that came with the kit said this arrangement should make a hat with a circumference of 46 cm, which can stretch to fit a range of sizes, but mine was a bit larger. If you want it on the smaller size, you could try a smaller loom arrangement.)

Casting on

Make a slipknot and put it on the green peg. Then do an “e-wrap” around the pink peg to the left of the green peg (going clockwise around the loom). The e-wrap technique looks like a lower case “e” as it goes around the pegs. Specifically, you’ll want to move the yarn inside of the loom, then go clockwise completely around the pink peg, and end up with the yarn back inside of the loom. Keep doing this for each peg, going clockwise around the loom (until you get back to the beginning, at the green peg). See the pictures for details. Be sure not to wrap the yarn too tight or it’ll be hard to knit with later! For tips on knitting on a loom, check out this Loom Knitting: Getting Started on the Round Loom PDF.

Go around the loom using the e-wrap two more times, so each peg should have three wraps of yarn around it. (You should end back up at the green peg.)

Tip: If you’re new to using a knitting loom, you may want to practice a few rounds of e-stitches to make sure you’re happy with how tight/loose your stitches are.

Knitting stitches

I used the one-over-two stitch technique because I liked the appearance it gave for this hat. Once you have three loops of yarn on each peg, do the one-over-two stitch by hooking the knitting tool (with the metal hook) under the bottom loop of yarn on the green peg, and then carefully lift it over the peg. The green peg should now have two loops of yarn. See the pictures for details. Continue to do this to each peg, going clockwise around the loom. You should end up with two loops on each peg (stop at the green peg). Your first round has now been knitted!

Now do the e-stitch for one complete round on the loom, going clockwise around it. Each peg should now have three loops of yarn on it again.

Repeat this one-over-two stitch until you have completed 50 rounds. If you want a shorter hat than what’s pictured, you could stop before 50 rounds.

Binding off

Knit off a round of stitches so that you’re left with only one loop of yarn on each peg.

Cut the yarn so that the loom is left with a length that’s almost twice the circumference of the loom itself. Then take the knitting needle and thread this yarn tail into it. Starting at the green peg, put the needle through the yarn on the peg and pull the yarn through. Continue moving the needle through the yarn on each peg, going clockwise around the loom. Stop when you get back to the green peg.

Use the knitting tool to remove the last loop of yarn from each peg, lifting the yarn over the peg as you did before.

Gently pull on the tail of yarn to close the end of the hat. Then flip the hat inside-out, so the knitted “rows” are on the inside (and the flatter side is on the outside).

Finishing touches

To adjust the hat length and give the hat a cute brim, you can fold the last few inches up and over the bottom of the hat – see the pictures. Take a new piece of yarn that’s a little longer than the circumference of the hat and use it to attach the folded-over edge in place (sewing together what was the end of the hat with the main part of the hat).

You can also use this yarn to adjust the circumference of the hat so that it fits you well. To do this, collect the ends of the yarn on one side of the hat (this will be its back), try the hat on, and pull the yarn until the hat feels snug. Then you can tie the yarn together to keep the circumference consistent. See the pictures for details.

Step 3: Knitting the Legs

Assembling the loom

Connect the loom pieces to form a rectangle using two 12-hole, straight pieces and four 6-hole, corner pieces. (The rectangle shape is just to give the loom more structure – you’ll only be using part of one side of it.) Insert a green peg into a hole (marking the start of the round) and then put four pink pegs into every other hole on the left of the green peg (making five pegs in the loom in total). See the pictures for details.

Casting on

Make a slipknot and put it on the green peg. Then do an e-wrap (as described in Step 2) around each pink peg, moving to the left on the loom. When you get to the last pink peg, do a second e-wrap loop around it, ending up with your yarn back inside of the loom.

Then move the yarn clockwise around the peg to the right, and continue doing this (moving right across the loom) until you reach the green peg. The two loops on each peg should be right on top of each other. See the pictures for details (as this can be confusing!).

Then do an e-wrap around each peg again, ending up on the far left pink peg with three loops of yarn on each peg.

Knitting stitches

Use the one-over-two stitch technique (as described in Step 2) to knit 30 rounds on the loom. Each “round” will be when you end up on the right-most or left-most peg, since you’re not knitting in a circle (or you can think of a “round” as being when you have used the knitting tool to lift a loop of yarn over each peg on the row).

Binding off

Knit off a round of stitches so that you’re left with only one loop of yarn on each peg.

Cut the yarn so that the loom is left with a length that’s the length of the loom itself. Then take the knitting needle and thread this yarn tail into it. Starting at the end where the tail is, put the needle through the yarn on the peg and pull the yarn through. Continue moving the needle through the yarn on each peg. Stop when you get back to the end of the row.

Use the knitting tool to remove the last loop of yarn from each peg, lifting the yarn over the peg as you did before.

Making the other legs

Repeat this step three more times to knit a total of four legs.

Step 4: Knitting the Head

Assembling the loom

Connect the loom pieces to form a long rectangle using two 36-hole, straight pieces and four 6-hole, corner pieces. (The rectangle shape is just to give the loom more structure – you’ll only be using part of one side of it.) Insert a green peg into a hole (marking the start of the round) and then put 13 pink pegs into every other hole on the left of the green peg (making 14 pegs in the loom in total). See the pictures for details.

Casting on

Do this as you did in Step 3. You should end up with three loops of yarn on each peg.

Knitting stitches

Use the one-over-two stitch technique (as described in Step 2) to knit 38 rounds on the loom. Each “round” will be when you end up on the right-most or left-most peg, since you’re not knitting in a circle (or you can think of a “round” as being when you have used the knitting tool to lift a loop of yarn over each peg on the row).

Binding off

Knit off a round of stitches so that you’re left with only one loop of yarn on each peg.

Cut the yarn so that the loom is left with a length that’s the length of the loom itself. Then take the knitting needle and thread this yarn tail into it. Starting at the end where the tail is, put the needle through the yarn on the peg and pull the yarn through. Continue moving the needle through the yarn on each peg. Stop when you get back to the end of the row.

Use the knitting tool to remove the last loop of yarn from each peg, lifting the yarn over the peg as you did before.

Attaching the face to cardboard

You should end up with a knitted square that’s about 20 cm in width. This will be attached to a piece of cardboard that will make a firm head.

Cut a piece of cardboard that is 20 cm by 11.5 cm. On the cardboard, make a straight line that is 11.5 cm from one of the short ends (and make the line parallel to that end). Use a utility knife to carefully cut through one layer of the cardboard, leaving the other layer intact. Bend the cut cardboard pieces back so that they form a 90 degree angle. The use a few pieces of tape to hold the cardboard in place at 90 degrees. See the pictures for details.

Use scissors (or a utility knife) to make small holes around the edge of the cardboard – see the pictures for details. Center the knitted face on the cardboard, with an end of the face reaching each short end of the cardboard, and a little bit of face going past the long sides of the cardboard. Then take a long piece of yarn and sew the face onto the cardboard using the yarn, going into the holes in the cardboard and through the knitted face. Sew all around the edge of the cardboard.

Step 5: Cutting Out and Gluing the Squares Together

Now you’ll get to cut out and glue together the “squares” that go on the mooshroom – these are the gray patches on its body, as well as its facial features, hooves, horns, ears, udder, and the spots on the mushrooms on its back. (Each square is like a pixel.) Based on the size of head I wanted to make, I ended up making each square be about 1.55 cm by 1.55 cm. I then stared at far too many pictures of mooshrooms to figure out the exact shape (combination of squares) and colors of each non-red spot on their bodies. (Technically there are three shades of gray on their bodies, but I simplified this to two. You’re welcome to add more if you want J.)

Cutting out the squares

Print out the PDFs in this step. (Only the single-page PDFs – the multi-page PDF comes later.) This includes five, single-paged PDFs with shapes that are labeled A to O (first PDF), P to W (second PDF), X to Y (third PDF), Z to AF (fourth PDF), and AG to AJ (fifth PDF). Each picture should be printed out on a standard-sized sheet of paper.

Carefully cut out each labeled piece (e.g., A, B, C…). Then temporarily attach the paper to the same-colored felt using sewing pins or something similar (see the pictures). (The possible colors are black, white, light gray, dark gray, and pink.) Carefully cut the fabric out around the paper pieces. You will need to cut out multiple copies of some pieces. These will have a number next to them, for example: (x15). This would mean you’d need to cut 15 copies of this piece out of felt. After cutting out each felt piece, I recommend leaving the paper template stacked on top of it so you can easily remember which lettered piece it is later.

Gluing the squares together

Once you’ve cut all the felt pieces out, arrange them together to make the correct patches (and other features) that go on the mooshroom. To do this, refer to the 5-page PDF (which should be labeled mushroom_squares_layout.pdf). This PDF shows how to arrange each felt piece on/near the other felt pieces. For example, on the first page you can see that piece F goes on top of piece E (and how they fit together), while the A pieces (the eyes) do not go on top of any other pieces. For more complicated pieces, I recommend using sewing pins to hold the pieces in place as you arrange them.

Once you’re happy with the arrangement on a piece, glue the individual pieces down using the tacky glue. I put a generous amount of glue on the back of each piece because I was paranoid it wouldn’t hold well, but it did! Apply pressure to hold the pieces together as they glue – specifically, for larger pieces, I’d recommend leaving some large, flat, heavy books on the pieces for 30+ minutes to make sure they’re securely attached.

Tip: If any visible glue residue is left, you can get rid of it by gently dapping with a damp rag (but be sure not to get it too wet since water dissolves the glue).

Step 6: Gluing the Squares to the Head

Arranging the pieces

Arrange the pieces on the cow’s face based on the five-page PDF in Step 5. (You can also look at the pictures of the face in this step.) Pull back the parts of the knitted face that are hanging past the edges of the cardboard to create the left and right sides of the face – ears, horns, and other side-face features will go here. Pulling these sides back will turn the front into a square-shaped face. The shorter part of the head (with the smaller cardboard segment) will become the top of the head (which piece E and F will fold back onto). See the pictures here for details.

Gluing the pieces

When you’re happy with your arrangement, glue the pieces onto the head/face, one side at a time. When gluing the felt pieces onto the knitted parts, I think it’s best to apply a lot of pressure for at least 30+ minutes. To do this, I squeezed some novels onto the head piece between the side pieces of tape. I stacked several novels and then a textbook onto the head pieces while felt pieces were being glued to it.

Step 7: Gluing the Squares to the Hat Base

Arranging the pieces

Arrange the pieces on the cow’s body based on the five-page PDF in Step 5 and based on images of mooshrooms. The reality is that the hat is not the same size/shape as a mooshroom, so you’ll have to be creative but still try to keep it similar to the real thing. I think it’s best to figure out where/how you want to place the head, and then going from there. Note that the pieces around the head (L, P, and Y) may have parts of them covered by the head – this is completely fine to do. You can also look at the images in this step to see how I arranged the pieces.

Here are some good mushroom images I found that may be helpful for placing the pieces:

• Mooshrooms from the front, their right side, and posterior
• Mooshroom from the front and its right side
• Mooshroom from the front and its left side

I highly recommend using sewing pins (or something similar) to keep the pieces in place on the hat base as you arrange them.

Gluing the pieces

Again, as with the head, I recommend applying a lot of pressure for at least 30+ minutes when gluing the felt pieces onto the knitted parts. Also only do one side/piece at a time. To do this I basically flattened out one part of the hat at a time as I glued the pieces on. I flattened it in a sandwich of sheets of paper and then textbooks (the paper was to protect the textbooks from the glue).

Tip: To glue the back pieces on the mooshroom, I squeezed paperback novels in there to make a flat gluing surface out of its back.

Step 8: Gluing the Squares to the Legs

Gluing the pieces

The J/O pieces should go on the right legs while the J/K pieces should go on the left legs. The J/O pieces should go about halfway up the legs, along the front edge. The J/K pieces should go near the top of the legs, along the front edge. See the pictures here (and mooshroom-linked images in Step 7) for details. Glue the pieces as described in Step 7.

The AJ pieces (large, black rectangles) are the hooves. Fold the hooves over the bottom of each leg, as shown in the pictures here. There should be a little extra felt on the left and right sides of each hoof. Glue the hooves on like this. Once they have dried, take the extra felt edges, pin them together (if necessary), and fold them backwards. Glue them backwards like this (so the extra felt is on the back sides of the legs) – using a binder clip to hold them while they glue works great.

Arranging the legs on the body

Figure out where the legs should go – again you can use mooshroom images (linked in Step 7) or the pictures here to see where the legs go relative to the head, specific patches, and other features. I recommend basically placing them symmetrically (on the left and right sides of the body, back from the head) and not too far forward that they get in the way of peripheral vision.

Attaching the legs

Use the yarn tail of the legs (if available) to sew them on to the edge of the hat. (If there isn’t a tail available, just use a new piece of yarn.)

Step 9: Knitting the Mushrooms

Assembling the loom

Connect the loom pieces to form a small rectangle using two 6-hole, straight pieces and four 6-hole, corner pieces. Insert a green peg into a hole (marking the start of the round) and then put pink pegs into every other hole going around the loom. See the pictures for details.

Casting on

Do this as you did in Step 2. You should end up with three loops of yarn on each peg.

Knitting stitches

Use the one-over-two stitch technique (as described in Step 2) to knit 20 rounds on the loom.

Binding off and filling with fiberfill

Do this as you did in Step 2. When you cut it off from the ball of yarn, leave a yarn tail that’s about twice the length of the circumference of the loom. After you close the “working end” of the hat, invert the hat (so that the “ridges” are on the inside). Take the yarn tail and sew it into the opposite, open end. You’ll be using this yarn to close this end too, but before you close it, add some polyester fiberfill. Don’t stuff it full of the fiberfill – just fill it enough to give it some shape. Then use the yarn to close off the end of the mushroom (tying off the end of the yarn and tucking it away in the mushroom).

Adding mushroom spots

The 24 AI pieces are the mushroom spots – I made 8 spots for each of the 3 mushrooms. It’s difficult to adapt the mooshroom’s mushroom spots to a 3D round object, but you can look at the pictures here to see what I did. (You can also look at the mooshroom pictures linked in Step 7 to get other ideas for approaching this.)

Basically, I put one spot on each narrow end (where the ball was bound off), just below the center. I then put 3 spots on the “front” and “back” sides of the mushroom. For placing these 3 spots -- On each side, I put a spot at the same height as the two end spots, but centered on its respective side, and I then placed the other two squares around this one. See the pictures for how exactly I did this. Glue on the spots as described in Step 7.

Making additional mushrooms

Be sure to repeat this entire step two more times so you end up with three mushrooms.

Step 10: Attaching the Mushrooms

Arranging the mushrooms

Again, refer to pictures of mooshrooms (in Step 7) to get an idea of where to place the mushrooms. One mushroom is centered on the head, one is near the middle of the body but off to the right side a little, and the last mushroom is on the far back, off to the left side a little. When you try playing them, make sure they do not bump into each other too much – they should be evenly spaced out.

Making the “stems”

To make “stems” for the mushrooms, I used pieces of a cardboard tube (either from a paper towel roll or toilet paper roll should work). I cut the tube pieces so that they’re about 1.6 cm tall. To give it more of a Minecraft feel, I then folded the pieces into square shapes – see the pictures.

Attaching the mushrooms

To attach a mushroom to the body, put glue around both open sides of a cut tube piece, place the piece where you want the mushroom centered on the body, and then center the mushroom on top of this (making sure the spots are oriented correctly). I then put a paperback novel on top of the mushroom for 30+ minutes while it glued.

Repeat this process to attach the other two mushrooms. I recommend attaching only one at a time.

Note: Be sure to attach the mushroom to the head before attaching the head to the body, as this is a lot easier to do. Once the mushroom is attached to the head, you can attach the head the same way you did for the legs -- just use some yarn and the knitting needle to basically sew the head to the body (making sure it's placed correctly). You will end up sewing the sides of the head closed a little so that you get a nice curve that you can sew onto the curve of the hat (giving the mooshroom a truncated neck). See the pictures here and in the next step for how the mooshroom's head attachment should look.

Step 11: Showing Off Your Awesome Mooshroom Hat!

Once it’s done, show off your awesome fungus-ridden hat – great for conventions! – or embarrass a friend by having them wear it in public! Or just sit around the house looking contemplative while wearing it – it’s sure to help enhance your critical thinking abilities.*

Watch the video to see the mooshroom hat in all its 3D glory.

(*Statement is most likely not true, but it’s fun to pretend.)