The Red Sweater

So, this is a very simple pillow, but now that it’s complete, I’ve absolutely fallen in love with it. I knitted one side in moss stitch, 20×20 inches, over a year ago on a week-long trip to my parents house for thanksgiving (or something, I just remember the long plane ride and the knitting, watching movies and the knitting, sitting in the backseat of the car and the knitting, etc.)

Moss stitch is boring. Tedious, really. But there’s nothing like it for texture and floppy, drapey, soft fabric. The pillow is knitted from two (yes, just two) balls of Lion Brand Kitchen Cotton in natural. I love that stuff. One, it’s really cheap so it’s not a big deal to buy a bunch and just have it laying around for random projects. Two, it’s really durable. It’s a work-horse cotton. Three, there’s not a lot of sheen, just a soft natural look with little flecks of what I assume are cotton leavings (the twiggy stuff that doesn’t get filtered out in the cotton processing) - whether it is or not, the look of it made up into a thing is very organic and unprocessed.

It took a long…long…time to knit the moss stitch side (moss stitch, if you’re not familar, is knit one purl one, so you’re switching your yarn from the front to the back of your work every stitch. It slows you way waaaaayyyyy down.) So, once I was finally ready to put this sucker together, I wasn’t about to make it knitted on both sides (as originally planned). Instead I found a checkered upholstry fabric in cream and white that echos the moss stitch perfectly.

Throw in an 18 inch zipper (not 20 inch, so there’s a little bit of a solid seam on the edges of the zipper to make it feel more sturdy) and it’s all done! Sewing knitted fabric is hard - I don’t think I have the right “feet” on my sewing machine, but we got through it.

And my puppies love it.