Adopt Me Vests: Part 2

Holy cow has it been a busy past couple of weeks for me... I've been traveling for work quite a bit (which is unusual), so I got done what I could on these super cute doggy vests in between trips to Orlando and Dallas.

Everything from Amazon.com arrived right away (yay, Prime!), which included the buckles, belting, and interfacing. I also picked up some cheap lime green fabric to make a sample so I could check my pattern.


The fabric arrived a week or so later; all 12 yards of it! Four yards of turquoise, eight yards of lime green.


I found the most efficient way to cut these out was to essentially cut four layers at once; a double thickness to get two vests, then another fold at the center of the vest. This ensures the vests are symmetrical, while also saving a ton of time and effort compared to cutting out the pieces individually. I had started out by tracing the patterns onto the fabric with a marker, but this seemed extra tedious. I ended up cutting the majority of them out with the pattern piece pinned to the fabric, like shown below.


Little thief stealing my pattern weights...

SOOOO helpful, these two. :)

I got a grand total of 44 vests from my 12 yards of fabric! That's about 10 more than I anticipated, so that makes me super excited. I cut the majority of the vests to the medium size; extra small seemed really tiny to be very common (chihuahua?), small is probably good for a Cocker spaniel or beagle, while the large seemed to fit a horse. Ha ha. Well... maybe a big St. Bernard or something. Most of the doggies at the Humane Society here tend to be "bully" mixes or other larger (but not horse-large) breeds, so I thought my "medium" size would fit a good majority of them.


Next up: screen printing! I separated the pairs of fabric pieces and adhered one from each set onto some fusible interfacing to stabilize the fabric for printing. I dropped off the stack of unfinished vests the day before I left for Orlando...



... and picked them up finished the day before I left for Dallas! They're so cute and I can't wait to get rolling on them again! My mom is going to come over on Saturday and help with the assembly process... I think I should go pick up some wine.


Stay tuned for pictures of the finished vests... Howie and Schnoodles will be making special appearances! :)

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Football Blanket Crochet Chart

Image
Here is the chart I worked off of for the football blanket... it is sized for a baby afghan, about 36 by 48 inches, but the chart can be easily modified to make it bigger. I worked the entire blanket in double crochet, and the white laces in the center were made with the tapestry stitch, in which the color not being used is carried across the top of the work and the stitches are made over it, concealing the color. Here's a pretty good tutorial for the tapestry stitch, although as I stated earlier, I did all double crochet for this project, but the concept is the same. For this particular blanket, I used five balls of Bernat Waverly yarn in brown, and almost a whole skein of Red Heart Super Saver in white for the lines and laces. I believe I used a size J hook, which made the project go nice and quick. Adjust the size of yarn and hook to fit your needs- everyone crochets differently! Happy crocheting! :) Update: if you love this football blanket, check out my football...
Read more

Temperature Record Cross Stitch

Image
I tried telling people years ago that cross stitch was cool again... and I WAS RIGHT! Pay no attention to the random pet hairs... I'm in this crazy cross stitch group on Facebook that features non-traditional subject matter, from naughty words to feminist themes to potty humor and beyond. While I don't consider it my style to be crass or subversive, I do appreciate the modern approach to a very old craft that is normally associated with "grannies" (not that there's anything wrong with that, either). This group has introduced me to a variety of interesting new project ideas, including the concept of a temperature stitch. Essentially, each day's high and low temperature are recorded in different colored stitches to provide a really interesting visual of our climate and seasons. This whole idea has my head spinning around ways to physically represent climate change in artsy-crafty form by going through the last hundred years and stitching a huge collecti...
Read more

Kaffe Fassett Jelly Roll Jam Quilt

Image
Here it is! I tried something new with this quilt, and I'm not sure I was 100% successful. The binding was unusual for me. I normally do the whole 2.5" strip, hand-sewn binding thing, but I wanted to try using the backing as the binding this time to keep it simple. I LOVE this backing fabric ; it's so soft, and it tied in so nicely with the color scheme of the Kaffe Fassett "Tides" jelly roll. I have noticed though, that this particular fabric shows a lot of poke holes, so be careful with pin placement and try to get your seams right the first time around. I worked really hard to turn my edges under nicely and pin well, at least every 2 inches. Unfortunately, as I kind of  suspected, some of the loose ends bulged out in between the pins as my presser foot went over them. Now that I've washed the quilt, I can see that I need to do some seam ripping to fix a lot of little peeks of batting and frayed edged. Sad face. I also noticed tha...
Read more