Catwoman: When In Rome Pillow (For Tim Sale)

Finished!

It has been a very long time since I've posted anything here. I had to cease all knitting for over a year so as to let an injury heal, and there have been other priorities as well. But as one of my favorite times of the year came rolling back around, I was inspired out of knitting hiatus. That time of year, my friends, is comicon. In particular, the Emerald City Comic Convention (ECCC) which occurs in early spring.

Back view of finished pillow.

In 2007, my husband (then boyfriend) and I attended our first ECCC. I had knit on of my favorite artists, the wonderful Tim Sale, a scarf as a gift. It's a knitted version of a panel from a comic he did called Superman: Kryptonite. You can see it here. (With progress posts here, here, here and here.) With the exception of 2009, we've been to ECCC every year since but I had yet to produce a follow-up gift for Tim. I contemplated different project ideas, trying to decide on the right image and the right item to knit that image into. Gauge of yarn, number of required stitches to create the image (without losing too much detail) and the right type of item so that the dimensions of the image would fit. It sounds troublesome and awful but I think I love that part of the knitting process the best. Laying the groundwork and working out the game plan.

Closeup of the stitching on the back and the beading for Selina's jewelry.

Anyway, it would seem 2012 was the year of the follow-up knit gift. May I introduce the Catwoman: When In Rome Pillow for Tim Sale.

Closeup of Selina and the cat.

~Specs~

Pattern:
Made up on the go by me. I used Knitpro to graph out the image.

Yarn:
Louet Gems #1 Super Fine / Fingering Weight 100% Merino Wool (185 yds/169 m/50g)
- 2 skeins of black
- 1 skein each of candy apple red and cream

Needles:
1.5mm addi lace circs

Pros:
Everything. This project came out perfect. I am very, very happy with it.

Cons:
No cons for this project, everything went smoothly and I enjoyed every second of it. This obviously makes me crazy as I don't know anyone else that would enjoy doing intarsia with fingering weight yarn on 1.5mm needles. Yep. Crazy. ;)


Below is a random smashup for photos I took while I was constructing the pillow. There aren't any shots during the knitting because I was being too methodical to take breaks in my knitting to take any, so apologies for that.

This is the original layout I was working from.
It's available as a desktop background on Tim Sale's website.


This is the pillow laid out similar to the original in comparison.

Gift tag - For Tim!


Gift tag - From Venus!

I used my window as a light box to trace the letters before stitching them on.


The template and finished trace.

Tracing finished and ready for hand stitching.

Blocking the knitted piece to size and a view of the reverse.

Pinning on the piping in preparation for the sewing machine.

Piping sewn on knitted side, ready for the rest of the layers to be sewn on!


A Closeup view of the finished piping at the top. (I included a small hanging tab.)


A closeup view of the finished piping at the bottom,
where I used a crisscross finish for the piping.

It was my first time using piping of any kind so I was very happy with the way it turned out.

Friday morning my fella and I headed down to Seattle! During the convention, my turn came around for a fast pass and I was able to give Tim his gift and the pillow has now gone to a happy home. :D

Tim Sale