Custom Pet Portrait Kinusaiga Kit: 8" × 8"

Send us a photo of your pet and we'll turn them into a kinusaiga piece you finish yourself.

Kinusaiga is a Japanese fabric art that looks like quilting with none of the sewing in it. You score a groove around the edge of a shape, cut a piece of fabric a little larger than that shape, and tuck the edges down into the groove with the back of a seam ripper. The picture fills in one shape at a time. Most people have the hang of it about ten minutes in.

The one in the photos is Maggie, a Bernese, drawn from the sunny picture underneath it.

How the custom part works
You order first, then we email you to sort out the photo. Any clear picture of your pet's face works, and a real photo file beats a screenshot every time. We draw the portrait from it and send you a rendered version of the finished piece, so you see what you're getting before a thing gets printed. You get two rounds of changes if the ears aren't right or the background wants to be a different color. Nobody's design goes to print before they've said yes to it.

You cut the grooves yourself
Like all of our kits, this one ships uncut: your design arrives printed on the transfer adhesive paper and already mounted on the foam board, and you score the grooves as you go with the craft knife in the box. With a pet that works in your favor. You know your own dog's face better than we do, and once you're looking at real fabric you may want to move a line or widen an eye.

What ships
The 8" × 8" foam board with your approved design printed on the adhesive paper, a small craft knife for scoring the grooves, fabric swatches for every section of that design and then some, a seam ripper for tucking, a card with the steps on it, and a shadowbox if you picked one.

About the fabric: yours will be close to the render we send you, and the colors will be very close, but the exact prints and the mix change with what we can keep in stock, so the photo is the idea rather than a promise. We pack extra swatches so you can make it your own, and no two kits come out quite the same.

You'll need scissors. That's the one thing we didn't put in the box, since you already own a pair. A pen is handy too if you'd rather trace a shape than cut around it. The craft knife is sharp, so if kids are helping the cutting is the grown-up's step.

Picking a shadowbox
The finished piece pushes into a shadowbox and hangs on a wall or sits on a shelf. Black or natural wood, whichever suits the room it's going in. Skip it if you already have a frame you like, or if you'd rather pick the frame out yourself.

Timing
Plan on a couple of weeks. Most of that is the back and forth on the design, which moves as fast as you reply to us.

Rather start with one of our designs? Here are all our kinusaiga kits.