Hand-tufted pet portraits · Made to order
Your pet, tufted by hand from one photograph
Ksenia Derr redraws your animal by hand, matches the acrylic yarn to its actual coat and tufts the portrait one field of color at a time. Nothing here is printed. Made to order in 10 to 15 business days, with free tracked shipping across the US.
How it works
How a photograph becomes a portrait
- 1
You send a photo
An ordinary snapshot from your phone is enough. Two or three angles help more than one perfect frame.
- 2
Ksenia redraws it by hand
She turns the photograph into a colour mockup and matches yarn shades against the real coat. You see it and approve it before anything is made. Revisions are free.
From a pencil sketch to a color mockup, matched against the coat. - 3
The tufting begins
A hand-held gun drives acrylic yarn through a stretched textile base, one field of color after another. A 33 × 33 in portrait takes four to five days of work.
Contours traced onto the stretched base before the gun starts. - 4
The pile is shaped and finished
It is levelled with a trimmer, then finished by hand with scissors. You receive photographs of the finished piece before it is boxed.
Levelling the pile, then shaping the detail by hand with scissors.
What you are paying for
Why the likeness holds
Two things make the difference, and both can be measured.
The first is density. A 33 × 33 in portrait takes 4.85 lbs of yarn, about 290 grams per square foot. The usual trade figure at this pile height is 227. The tighter the stitch, the smaller the detail the needle can hold, and that is why an eye reads as an eye rather than as a dark patch.
The second is that black is never worked in black. A black coat is built from grays, blues and browns, the way a painter builds volume out of color rather than shadow. A printing press reproduces pixels. A copyist reaches for black yarn. Neither one gives you the animal back.
Two collections
Commission
Your sketch, tufted by hand
Not every commission is a pet. Send a drawing, a photograph, a logo or a colour palette and it can be tufted at the size your wall needs. The mockup comes back to you before anything is made, and the price follows the area, so you know both before you decide. Larger pieces take longer: the studio is one person, and each piece is worked start to finish by the same pair of hands.
Commission
Have a piece in mind?
Made to order in any size. We reply within 24 hours with a price and a lead time.
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