Bulbasaur Mini Quilt

A few weeks ago I was house sitting at my mom's for a few days. While she was gone she gave me permission to utilize her sewing room, so I picked out a few fabrics, and decided to make a mini quilt! It took me a few hours to collect the fabrics and cut up my squares one night, and then I spent a few hours the next day piecing everything together. I used a whole piece of white fabric for the backing, and then stitched int eh ditch between all the squares for the quilting.

It's really simple, and really small, but it was really fun, and perfect for a short stay at my mom's!

Pikachu

I finally finished the Pikachu quilt! After spending several weeks letting my machine learn it's lesson, because I was having tension issues, I came back with a positive mentality and set out to do as good a job as possible on this last quilt.

It took me a little less than 50 hours to complete this quilt with the most time being spent on quilting (about 13 hours.) The binding presented a new challenge for me. This quilt features a hole in the middle which meant I had to hand sew the binding. Luckily I remembered the importance of ironing before sewing, and didn't have too much trouble getting all those corners taken care of.

The back of the quilt was made of six columns of scrap "pixels" and two panels of muslin on either side.

The quilting was fun, but presented a new challenge as well. I quilted around the binding like previous quilts, and around major features of the Pokemon, but this time I decided to add much more quilting, so I pretty much quilted around every major fabric change. That still left lots of unquilted areas, so I decided to quilt around certain individual pixels.

Dog Sweaters

It's absolutely NOT sweater weather anymore, but I've just finished knitting another sweater for my Catahoula Leaopard Dog, Opal, and I'd like to share all the sweaters I've made for her in the past as well.

First I'd like to say that I believe clothes are for utility, and if your dog doesn't need clothes, I would recommend not putting clothing on your dog. A sweater is nice for cold weather, but it doesn't protect your dogs feet so you still have to be very careful their feet aren't getting too cold as well!

I also believe that some dogs might not enjoy wearing clothes so you've got to be careful not to make wearing clothes something the dog hates. The first time I tried putting a sweater on Opal I was very surprised to learn that she was so excited to wear her sweater. She enthusiastically put it on (with my help) and seemed to enjoy continuing to wear it.

I started looking for free dog sweater patterns online and came across this neat pattern where you could input your dogs measurements and it would output a pattern tailored to your dog's size. I wondered how effective it might be, but I put in Opal's measurements and quickly knitted up a little sweater using their pattern. This is what I got:

This sweater is pretty ugly. In fact I have no idea where it is right now, but from there I modified the pattern even more to get a better fit. That's when I made this sweater:

I really enjoyed learning how to knit the intarsia so I could use several colors to make a nice argyle pattern.

And once I had finished that sweater I felt like I was a pro at intarsia and decided I'd like to try a more complicated pattern using the same method. It didn't come out as well as I would have liked. The yarn pulls in weird places and is loose in others. If you don't look too closely it's still an okay sweater though! This one compliments her natural colors as well, and it's got a lovely wintery feel to it, which is exactly what I was going for.

I was quite disappointed in how that last one came out so it took me a while to feel like making another one, but I was finally inspired by texture as it compares to the 2D patterns I had been using with multiple colors. This time I wanted to make a sweater which had a lovely texture to it, and so I searched and searched for an interesting pattern. The color choice is a bit unfortunate - I feel this sweater makes her look a bit like a clown - but this is the best fitting sweater yet!

Starting Pikachu

This time around I'm making sure to count how many hours it takes me to do each task. Although I neglected to account for the time it took to choose the fabrics. Cutting all these squares took me about 2 hours! Who knew cutting squares was so time consuming!

Next step is to put them into tidy little stacks that represent each row to be assembled. This step took me nearly 2 and a half hours!

I've already started assembling the rows. After that I'll have to iron them all out, and then start sewing the rows together. Then I'll have a finished quilt top! Finished, Pikachu will be about 3 and a half feet wide by 4 feet tall. Perfect for hanging on wall or draped over a couch!

Getting Started with Quilting

In high school I tried quilting with my mom. All those numbers, and the math, and precision cutting. It's like a huge math puzzle that I could totally get into! But after making a quilt's worth of blocks, I lost interest. I tried doing some hand quilting on that quilt once upon a time, but lost interest in that very quickly as well.

Fast forward about 10 years, and here I am, checking out cool crafty things online when I stumble upon this gem posted here:

Wow! A Pokemon afghan! I knew I needed a Pokemon shaped blanket in my own home, and so I started considering what it would take to knit one of my own. I chose Flaaffy as a cute enough character of interesting enough colors. You have to pick the colors carefully though because yarn doesn't come in just ANY color, and especially when you want to stick with the same quality of fiber so you can maintain consistent size in your squares!

I chose my brand of yarn, chose the fabrics, counted squares, charted diagrams, and finally got started with the knitting! It took me FOREVER to knit them all, and when I was done I still had to sew them all together! After finally getting them all sewn together, I still had all the loose ends to tie in. I was NOT interested. Today my Flaaffy blanket is tidily folded and sitting in my closet waiting to be shown off to my next nerdy visitor. Until then, I refuse to look at all those loose ends.

After Flaaffy, I decided I had enough with knitting and loose ends, and so I moved on to the next logical choice - quilting! I chose one of my all time favorite Pokemon for this, the first quilt I've ever finished.

I learned a whole lot about quilting from this quilt. I learned what a pillow case seam is, because I didn't want to bind a quilt with a gajillion corners, half of which would be pointing in a non-typical direction for a quilt. I learned the importance of ironing seams VERY flat, and in fact I learned the importance of seam directions. Not only did I get to learn a lot about quilting, but I also get to see this cheerful fellow hanging on my wall every day when I come home from work!

After finishing the Darumaka quilt I was thoroughly captivated by making Pokemon quilts. I had to have my next favorite Pokemon, Reuniclus, who is about twice the size! Now I have plans to make several more as well.