My next-door neighbor, Lori, has two teacup Chihuahuas. Like most little dogs, these tiny boys have oversized attitudes and think they are the guard dogs of the neighborhood. 😂
Anyway, Lori likes to dress her boys up in costume whenever possible, so I thought I would gift them a set of these Ladybug and Bumblebee outfits.
Designer Abbey Jackson wrote the Ladybug pattern to fit her fluffy 10-pound cat, and the Bumblebee pattern was written to fit her other cat, who was a 4-pound kitten at the time.
Lori's dogs, being the micro teacup variety of Chihuahua, are almost certainly less than 5 pounds each. I didn't actually weigh or measure them before starting this project, so it probably would have been a lot smarter of me to have measured them first! Ha!
I used leftover yarn scraps to crochet these, mostly bits of Red Heart and/or Caron Simply Soft, I'm guessing. Initially, I crocheted one of each of the costumes based on the 10-pound pet size pattern, just to get a sense of the sizes. Then, I followed those up with one of each in a significantly smaller size, which I hope will fit Lori's dogs. Fingers crossed!
I deviated from the written pattern by starting the neckline with a 5.5 mm hook and doing a row of foundation DC. IMO, the foundation stitch lets the neckline stretch more easily than with a row of chains followed by a row of DCs.
After joining to work in the round, I worked a round of alternating FPDC/BPDC, still using the 5.5 mm hook, to give the neckline a ribbed effect. Then I switched to the 5 mm hook to work the next round in FPDC/BPDC, and the following two rows in FPDC/BPDC. I used the 5 mm hook for the rest of the costume.
I worked the body rows/rounds in DC as specified in the pattern, but I deviated from the pattern by making fewer stitches and fewer rows to size the costumes down to fit Lori's boys.
Fingers crossed that they like these! 😊
Update: Lori said that these fit her boys perfectly, but they didn't like her trying to put their front legs through the space between the neckline and the chest strap. So I'm going to fix that problem by making the chest strap open on one end and attaching it with a button. That way, the boys don't have to fret about squeezing their front legs through the small opening. I think that will fix the issue. 🤞