Thomas Philip Bear

First of all, thank you for your kind words about Ozzie.  I'm feeling a bit better - it still sucks, but I know I did the right thing for him.

The other cats have settled down.  Most of them will never know he's not still in his room; Nicky, the one cat he did spend time with, is a little confused, but he's adjusting to being out with the tribe.

On a more cheerful note, I wanted to introduce my first custom bear for the upcoming holiday season.  Custom projects usually slow down over the summer, which was okay since my summer temp job hasn't ended yet (soon!), but I was happy to take this guy on, and even happier to send him off to California yesterday.

The one piece of clothing my customer supplied was her grandfather's plaid shirt.  She contacted me through Etsy and said that she liked a particular photo on one of my listings, and could I do a bear that looked like that one.  She didn't have a sweater to send, only the shirt, but I have such a ridiculous amount of sweaters on hand, I told her not to worry and that I would find something that worked with her shirt.  She also wanted her grandfather's name embroidered on the front (same as the example bear in my listing).

So this little guy is partly from her, partly from my stash, and wholly (I hope) what she wanted.

I have a few more made-to-order bears coming, and an embroidered Christmas stocking heading out tomorrow.

It may only be the week of Labor Day, but I can already feel the holidays approaching.

Halfway There

Well, I may not be a natural quilter, but I don't mind the piecework portion of it.

As you can see, the bear is finished.  I cut her first, using a sleeve from the jacket, a small portion of the floral skirt and a cap sleeve from the blouse.  I like her.  She's very purple, but I like her.

The jacket presented a problem for my original quilt design since it was princess seamed front and back, and had a peplum.  Lots of smallish, odd-sized pieces.

The skirt, on the other hand, was full, with only side seams.  The blouse had bust darts, front buttons and gathers, but still provided a fair amount of unseamed fabric.

I decided to do the quilt in strips for ease and speed, and because I like the simplicity of it.  There was no way to avoid a lot of the floral running together, so instead of trying to avoid it, I made it a feature, with pieces of the contrast fabrics only at the ends and in a few cases running horizontally.

I found a perfect light purple cotton for backing and I had batting in my stash already.  Both of those are cut to size, so now I just need to finish it off.

Like that's going to be the easy part.

What do you think?  There was no real way to make this look "childlike", considering the fabrics, but I think it will make a nice keepsake.

Jewel Box Bears

The set of 5 memory bears is finished and will soon be off to their new owners - well before the mid-November deadline!

I sent a photo of the first bear to the buyer, and got this in response:  "I can't wait to give these out!!!  I think there will definitely be some tears shed."

When I started this project, I was a little hesitant -- the bright colors, the vivid prints, the slippery fabrics --  but as I went on, I began to enjoy them more and more.

I started with what I thought of as the "easiest" fabric - the colorful blocks with animal print, and worked my way to the most difficult, through the turquoise peacock print with its swirling magenta, red and blue feathers, and in the end, the blue, green and gold "cherub" print.  This one stumped me for a bit, since the caftan was wide bands of green and blue, with strips of black in between.  There was no real way to use both colors/prints in the same piece, because of the black, so I settled on a green body and head, with blue arms, legs, ears and central forehead piece.

All 5 bears have black faceted button eyes.  These really add something in my view, because I look at these bears and think of jewelry strewn on a bed, magically turned into shiny, special memory bears.

These are so much more than they started out being.  I hope their new owners will love them as much as I enjoyed making them.