Bazinga!

She beat me to it.

Have you seen this quilt?  Genius, right?  (Literally).

Brilliant Sheldon Cooper quilt by Candy Coated Quilts (Flickr photo by Candy Coated Quilts)

The stellar creative mind behind Candy Coated Quilts posted this piece of pixelated perfection earlier today on Flickr.  And, I LOVE it.  Sheldon was one of a long list of folks I'd considered 'pixelating' for my quilting pleasure.  I'm not sure how the artist came up with her design, but here's how I'd do it:

Pic2Pat.com

It's a photo-to-cross-stitch converter program you can use to transform any pic you have into a cross-stitch pattern (or in our case, pixelated patchwork).

Here's a photo I found online of one Mr. Don Draper (swoon):

Once you upload into Pic2Pat, you can choose how fine or coarse you want your pixels to be (for us quilters, that translates into how many squares we want to piece) by adjusting the number of stitches per inch and the overall size of the pattern.

For example, your virtual quilt can range anywhere from vaguely reminiscent of your favorite ad-man...

8 stitches per inch, 4.5x6 inches, 28 colors

8 stitches per inch, 4.5x6 inches, 6 colors

  

to "For God's sake, Peggy.  Your hands are bleeding!"

18 stitches per inch, 18x24 inches, 28 colors

The best bet is likely somewhere in between:

14 stitches per inch, 6x8 inches, 28 colors

Highly recognizable from a distance, but not so daunting as to leave you feeling like "One minute you're on top of the world, the next minute some secretary's running you over with a lawn mower."

(Season 3, Episode 3...  Not that I'm counting).

Aside:  For you cross-stitch types out there, it will even give you a brand-specific quantitative listing of the skeins of floss you'd need for the number of colors you choose.

Alas, now that Sheldon's been plucked from the ether, guess I'll have to choose from some of my other favorites:

(I seem to have drifted from "brains" into "brawn...").


What pixelated people would YOU like to snuggle with on a cold winter's night?  :D