Finished: Felted Westie Sweaters

Back in June, I started this pair of felted sweaters for my Westies. The knitting pattern is from a book called Dress Your Dog - Nifty Knits for Classy Canines. One of the designs in the book is for felted sweaters, modeled by a pair of black Scotties.

The first sweater was too big for both Keli and Penny, so I used it as a guideline and made adjustments to the pattern before knitting the second sweater:

Sweater #2, before felting

I used the same process for wet-felting as for the first sweater, hand washing and agitating in hot sudsy water, then rinsing in cold water until the entire sweater was transformed from a knit to a semi-solid fabric.  The entire process took about an hour. When it was dry, I tried it on Keli and it was a very good fit.

It took me some time to get around to adding the last finishing touches to consider these complete ... first, I had to measure and cut off the excess length from the first sweater so it would fit Penny:

Sweater #1 after felting

pieces cut off of Sweater #1

The neck straps fit Penny well enough, but the belly straps needed to be trimmed.  I also trimmed and rounded the back edges of each sweater.  I was nervous about cutting into the sweater; the felted fabric gave up a few fuzzies, but didn't unravel.

Before I could declare these sweaters complete, I needed to machine stitch black velcro onto the neck and belly straps of each sweater, then get both dogs to pose for a few pictures.

Penny (left) and Keli (right)

Penny (left) and Keli (right)

Aren't they cute? It wasn't easy getting the Pesties to pose in their new sweaters, especially in August in 90 degree heat; fortunately they focus like lasers on lamb jerky treats and forget everything else.  Maybe next February we'll get pictures of them in their sweaters while running around in the snow ...

Ravelry link