Delving Into Dog Sweaters

I wanted to try to create a new pattern all on my own, since I've never written out a pattern before. Dog sweaters look deceptively easy, and my own doggo needed a sweater now that winter is almost here, so I decided to give it a go.

I wanted it to be Tunisian, since that's what I've been doing recently, so that I can continue my trend of learning new things.

I also had a lot of Paintbox Simply Aran around for an Iowa Hawkeye blanket I made for a friend last year, so that's what I went with.

The back piece was no problem; initially I tried to do a chest piece, a thinner piece to go between the forelegs, then a wider piece underneath to go under the belly and connect to the back piece. As it turned out, I made the chest piece too long and so the thin piece went back behind the forelegs, which was not a good look. Quite a big of frogging later, I had an acceptable sweater. At least Penny seems to like it!

The entire sweater is done in Tunisian simple stitch, and I used TL Yarn Craft's tutorial on cross stitching on top of TSS in order to add the Hawkeye logo. I think it turned out pretty cute!

I wasn't sure what to use for fasteners, and then I found this video demonstrating how to use a device from Amazon that adds snaps to crochet. I didn't buy that device, but I bought something similar, and then we figured out how to get the snaps on.

I did screw up the sizing a bit. The bottom piece along her belly isn't perfect by any means; it is a little bunched up because it's got 2 more snaps that it needs. But baby steps! I'm loving learning how to do it on my own.