Nearly Headless Noddy

Emergency surgery will be performed in the next few days on my little boy's toys.  As you can see Noddy toy is looking more like a giant cloth Pez dispenser (there's an idea for a toy.......) and poor Garfield toy has lost an eye.

They are well and trully loved and have been operated on before but for minor maulings only.

Noddy's head will be re-attached with only a slight scar along the neck and Garfield will need an eye patch ........................ but all of this will happen as soon as I can get Darcy away from them.....he loves them very much and every time I go to pick them up he thinks it's play time and grabs them from me.  (That's his little nose in the corner of the first photo - he's getting ready!!)

I'm going to have needle and thread ready for when he's having one of his power naps!!

Don't ya just love that smile?

Teddy Bear and Cat Making 101

It's been a while since the last time I drew up my own pattern for a teddy bear and I must confess that attempt left me a little embarrassed. But knowing that I needed a cat to complete Sophia so she matched the photo I used for the Maida challenge and wanting to create Baby Bear to complete Goldilocks I searched the net and found two teddy bear makers whose work I just love.

They are Sharie from Sreetzbears (http://sreetzbears.blogspot.com.au/) and Vivianne Galli (http://vivianne-galli.blogspot.com.au/).  I just love their naive, old fashioned feel so I bought a couple of their patterns and taking some tips I drew up the patterns for Puss and Baby Bear.

Whilst the tips were very helpful it was still a long process for me as dolly making comes a little easier ................. but practice makes perfect so I do intend to make more in the future.  Puss was probably the most challenging as making the gusset for the belly area left me scratching my heard – trying to pin here and pin there didn’t work – it took me ages to work that out – but in the end all I did was flatten out a little the body halves which I had sewn together and then drew an outline of where the edges touched the paper – easy!!

Heads mean gussets through the middle so how do you do this??  Well, I ended up drawing the side head panel and then using a piece of string and marker – running the string along the edge of head I drew up a gusset – measuring to points along the head where I wanted the gusset to match the muzzle and at other points around the head.  The only other question was how wide did I want the gusset – wide for a baby bear shape or really high forehead (again like a baby bear shape).  I chose the wide version as this is what came first (i’ll try the high forehead next time).

Puss’ mohair was already dyed when I purchased it but Baby Bear was a white sassy mohair which I hand dyed using Sharie’s technique.  Very satisfying if you love working with paints.

Anyway hope you like the end results – I must say after several months of trial and lots of error I am very happy with how they both turned out.  Both couples will be listed on my Etsy if you’d like to see more pictures (and sorry about the blurry ones!)