Saturday 10 June 2017

Un-bear-ably cute



I'm not a big kiddie person; a big kid yes but a kiddie person, no. There are a few exceptions to this as there are in all things. One of these exceptions is my previously mentioned nephew. This project comes as a result of his rather fine Mother requested I make a memory teddy out of his old baby grows. You're darn tooting I will! 




She gave me these four baby grows. Obviously as there's two white this needed to be the body and then the greyish one contrasting bits like the pads of hands and feet. The zebra one however as soon as I saw it I knew teddy needed to be able to dress up. I did initially play with the idea of forming an actual zebra head but once I stopped drinking the battery acid I realised this was madness. A brief googling of zebra hoodies later and popping a mane in the hood was the new plan. 




The pattern is from a lady called Joy is available for free with a tutorial here. I hadn't expected how big it would be when all printed out and I realised rapidly that I did not have another fabric for it. If I had read all the way down Joy's tutorial I would have realised the pattern made a teddy 18" high! I never read to the bottom and have yet to recognise why this is a bad idea. Anyway a quite trip to the photocopier later to reduce the scale down to 65% and we have a much more manageable pattern. 




Baby grows take some taking apart I tell you! Funny considering how built to last they are when they'll only be worn a couple of weeks, tops. Oh but how soft though?!? I was vaguely concerned my nephew would never get to see teddy as my mother took quite a shine to cuddles with him.





His eyes are safety eyes which were the devil's own job to attach. I had to use heavy duty pliers to attach them and as a result slightly scratched them. Sorry teddy I'll get you on the waiting list for cataract surgery. The mouth and nose I embroidered on with well embroidery thread actually.  




The hoodie is very haphazard as it's self drafted. You know this because it didn't occur to me to draw shoulders in my mock up attempt. I didn't have quite enough fabric to do all of the hoodie in the zebra print so used the contrast fabric to make the back. I also re-purposed the cuffs of the baby grow to make the sleeves cuffs. The mane was wool looped over a piece of sellotape and basted on to the seam allowance of the hood. I imagine there is more straight forward way of going about this but it didn't occur to me. The hood I couldn't really work out how to make it actually enclose the head so I just whacked a bunch of darts in it and called it good. 

Hanging out with the other wild animals
All in all I'm fairly happy with how he turned out and from the photos I've seen of him with the main man he's happy with the finished result too.