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!)