Crocheting a Plushie Inspired by Love Quotes

On our first date, my partner made a cheesy romantic comment while looking at the moon and while neither of us remember exactly what it was, I guess it stayed with me. Fast forward seven years later, I decided to crochet a plushie that illustrated common love quotes about the moon.

Now, it might have also been my love for poetry clashing with crochet.

But either way, when I was thinking of a plushie to make for Valentines this year, I thought about poetic space-themed love quotes like, “love you to the moon.” This led me to think about cows because of the popular nursery rhyme: “the cow jumped over the moon”.

Inspired by this, I decided to make a cow in an astronaut suit with a heart embroidered on its chest.

Of course, the cow had to have a moon.

At first, I was thinking it could be sewn between the cow’s arms, but then I remembered the cow would have an astronaut backpack.

So why not make the backpack open up so that it can hold the moon?

That way the moon could remain as a movable accessory and also be contained in some way. Plus, it would be almost like the cow went up to space to steal the moon, as if to say, “I’ll bring you the moon.”

While I was drawing the cow in my concept sketch, the patches kept reminding me of Earth. Since I was already on a space-themed mindset, I decided to make a tiny cow to go along with it. The little cow would be made in Earth colors (blue and green) as if to say, “you’re my world.” (This is also a little tribute to my partner who used to nickname me, “my world”.)

With any plushie that comes with detailed accessories, I like to start with the smallest accessory so I can use it to determine how large to make the plushie. This meant starting with the “earth cow.”

Originally, I tried to crochet it from the front to the back, but then I realized that I should probably make it a “globe” shape to make it more like the planet earth. So I restarted and worked the rounds from the top to the bottom instead.

While it did end up being a bit larger than what I drew in my concept sketch, I think it still worked out phenomenally. I used bobbles to make the feet and due to the small size of the cow, I embroidered on the horns.

Then it was on to making the big cow!

For the arms and legs, I made them relatively similarly to my unicorn pattern. I also really like how plushies look with the arms facing forward, so I angled the arms towards the front and sewed down a few extra rounds to hold them in place.

At the last second, I decided to crochet a separate round along the collar. This gave it more of the illusion of a suit on the cow versus just a color change.

In order to make the backpack open up, I crocheted two separate pieces and sewed the back side together. While I didn’t have a zipper myself to add to it and I don’t have any experience adding zippers to anything, I imagine that it would make a great addition.

Originally I thought that there was no way that I could fit the little cow inside of the backpack too, but I was pleasantly surprised when it kind of did.

See . . . it kind of does? It also seemed to fit for a lot of my testers’ plushies as well, but this may vary depending on tension and yarn.

Now, it was onto naming the cow! I chose the name “Luna” as a reference to the “moon.” And “Luna the Astronaut Cow” has become my new favorite pattern design! I’m a sucker for how it combined my two great artistic interests: crochet and poetry.

Also, it’s pink! My favorite color!

While I did originally create this pattern with “Valentines” in mind, I think it’s still an amazing pattern for “Mother’s Day” or even “Earth Day". The big and little cow reminded me of my mom and I had a feeling that this would be something that she would like. (And she did end up texting me that she loved this one especially. I might have to make her one in different colors!)

Here’s the 12 amazing cows that my testers made:

I love all the different colors that they used and some of them are crocheted in different yarns, so you can see how they work up! You can find these amazing crocheters on Instagram!

And here’s where to find the pattern:

If you’d like to make your own version of “Luna the Astronaut Cow,” you can find the pattern on my Etsy or on my Patreon. The Patreon PDF might be a little higher in definition since I had to condense the file size to upload it onto Etsy. The pattern is included with a “Mary’s Pattern Club” membership along with all my other PDF patterns.

I hope you love this pattern as much as I do! If you share your cow on social media, don’t forget to tag me—I can’t wait to see your creations!

Instagram, Tik Tok, YouTube: @themaryjay

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