Companion Cube

So I got really bored one night and randomly decided to make a companion cube. My boyfriend loves portal and I wanted to make him something (since most of all the other projects I've made were mostly just for me and my own fun). So companion cube away we gooooooo.

This project also took me a little bit of time, seeing as how I didn't really have a pattern to work off of. There were 6 panels, 6 circles to go on each panel, 8 corner pieces, and 12 center pieces. And by "center pieces" i  mean the little piece that goes in between each corner pieces. Aka there are 12 edges of a cube, and there had to be 12 thingies strapped to each edge. Anyway....

The panel was a little tricky and had to be redone several times. The first attempt was done in rows and in the shape of a square. But when I placed the circle piece on top, it just didn't look as nice and neat as I had wanted. One piece was round and the other piece was in rows and it didn't look very nice. Sooooo how can I blend the two together? Work in the round to make a square? Work in rows to make a circle? I tried the former figuring it would look too warped if I did the latter. So how do I turn it into a square from working in the round...

Luckily me, I had recently learned how to do a triple crochet. Yarn over twice, hook through loop, pull through first two loops, yarn over hook through next two, yarn over, hook through remaining hooks... At least that is what I had remembered. So if it was wrong, oopsie because that's what I did to make this anyway. Too late for corrections at this point. So I figure for each corner, I would make a tc (the rounds were done sc in each stitch while also increasing to a certain point), in between each sc. But that made the corner look too odd and not quite a square. This time I didn't have to redo the whole thing, just figuring out a corner. Long story short, I eventually figured out the right combinations of sc's and tc's along with the right number of sts in each round to make a nice corner. 

Another tricky part was also making each corner pieces. This didn't take as long as the panels though, the best way to cover 3 edges: a triangle! I used that as the basis of my pattern to make the corner pieces.

Eventually all pieces were made and sewn together and bam! A companion cube is made.

I purposefully did this without a pattern because I am in the process of learning how to make my own creations. I just want pieces that I make to be of my own original work and from a pattern that I've created myself. This is to not to say I won't occasionally look up a pattern or a how-to to help me along the way, but it's purely a guide for me to use. 

But with that being said, I think the amount of crochet'ed pieces I will be posting in the future may come a little bit less as it will take me longer to try to figure it out and get used to being able to see what it is I want to make and break it down to different geometric pieces. I'll still post as often as I can, I still sew, knit, etc, so there may be a couple of those as well. 

So for now, here is my latest creation, the companion cube :)

What better way to represent a companion cube, than with han solo and his buddy chewbacca

...

Hm... by "companion" did they mean friend or life long partner? Should it have been Han and Leia???