Beam me up, Scottie

Sorry if I got any trekkies out there all excited – this post has nothing to do with Star Trek. Just can’t resist a pun, even if the connection is pretty tenuous.

But I bring you – rather belatedly – February’s finished quilting project. Ta da! One cute scottie dog:

I saw a picture of one of these on a quilting blog somewhere (can’t remember which one, sorry), so I went hunting for a pattern. Found this one and whipped it up in a day or two. (Stop laughing! Two days is lightning fast for me.) If I was being strict about such things, it wouldn’t even qualify as finishing a UFO, since it jumped straight to the top of the queue, over all the genuine UFOs that have been languishing in the cupboard. But a finish is a finish, so I’m happy. And it’s just so cute! How could I resist?

I made it in reds to suit Demon Duck’s to-be-renovated room (if the long-awaited extension ever starts). She was very particular, and requested a proper collar with a dog tag. I was just going to tie a ribbon around its neck, but no, that would have been too easy.

I considered making a dog tag out of shrink plastic but got lazy. So I took her to the shops and let her choose a real dog tag and had it engraved. I should have gone with the shrink plastic – the tag cost way more than the dog! I nearly fell over when the guy handed me the engraved tag and said “that’ll be $15 thanks”. Ouch! That’ll teach me to take the easy way out.

The S stands for Scottarina, in case you’re wondering. Demon Duck has never been big on creative names for her stuffed toys. Her very first favourite was a blue rabbit called Bunny. Then Bunny was cast aside in favour of a purple koala called … wait for it … Koala. Finally Koala was superseded in her affections by a little brown bear called – yes, you guessed it – Little Brown Bear. “Scottarina” is positively inventive by comparison.

But none of them had a name tag worth more than they were ...