Now I'd like to tell you about one of my other creative obsessions.
Teddy Bear making
I first started making teddy bears about 10 years ago, after looking through my sister's bear and doll making magazines. Never one to shy away from a challenge, I chose a 10cm miniature to start and made him from upholstery fabric. He turned out rather well, so I did another, and another.
My love of the miniature bear has remained, and when looking through bear magazines I tend to pick out the ones that I would like to make, (usually the ones that are a little different) and then go to the photocopier to shrink them until they're somewhere between 8 and 11cm tall. Most of the time this works fairly well, and I have only had one real issue with one that hasn't. Stay tuned for a later post on that.
The majority of the bears that I have made I have kept. There are a few that I have made and given away (mainly to family) for various occasions, and a few that I have sold to friends or given away to be sold for fundraisers.
Here's all the bears that I had lying around the house. They don't often all get together in the same spot, but I attempted to find them all for this photo shoot.
The whole hug of bears |
Here's the whole gang. It took a bit of effort to find them all. I've only found one more that missed the photo shoot:
Here's all the bigger bears that I've done (and kept). They range in size from 40cm tall when standing, down to 13cm.
The BIG bears |
And here's the little ones. The biggest is around 12cm, down to the smallest which is a tiny 3cm tall.
The little bears |
When I went to the Craft and Quilt Fair with my mother in June (that seems like so long ago now), I had a voucher for a free bear pattern from The art of teddy bears, so I asked my mother to remind me as soon as we got home that I needed to go through my stash of mohair and start making him. Here's the result. He's a cute little guy, isn't he? I was hoping I'd manage to get the same puffy little cheeks as the pattern, but it was not to be. Never mind though, I still like him.
Once I finished this bear, I did a stocktake of all the poor little unfinished bears that I had lying around, and was a little surprised to find that there were 19 partially finished bears just waiting to join their friends around my house. There were a few that only needed their heads to be finished, while half a dozen hadn't progressed past being cut out. And in my fabric stash: assorted acrylic fur, 7 pieces of sparse mohair, not to mention the metre of mini bear fabric and samples of the same in assorted colours. That should keep me going for a few more years!
You'll be pleased to know that since I started writing this post a few months ago, I did make some progress on the unfinished bears, and managed to finish 7 bears from the black hole that is the unfinished pile.
One of these I donated to my son's school for their trivia night auction.
and here's the other 6 that I finished.
Now if only I could find the
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