Teddy Talk: Creating, Collecting, Connecting

Is it free to make a web site also?  I think I'm going to try it.

I was going to keep this bear, but a little girl at church fell in love with her, so I gave her to the girl.  You should see these two together.  She was so happy and she loves the bear so much. 

Becky is made from the softest pink faux fur with safety eyes and nose.  She's about 12 inches tall, which is the biggest bear I have made.  I got someone to do my flattie pattern on steroids.  If the pic doesn't work, let me know so I can get someone to re-size it.

How much does it cost to create a web site with blogger?  I've never been able to use that site, but I know other blind people who do, so maybe I'll get brave enough to try it.

Thanks for the pic, Becky.

I can't comment much about the bears because I can't see them, but I do have to say that Becky and Joanne, you're both the best.  Bearlove to you.
Lol, for some reason I made a typo and first wrote you're the bear instead of best, but that's true too.

Could someone please e-mail that picture to me so I can post it on another board?  Thanks for finding him.  I love my DJ.  I've been holding and squuzzing him all day.

Thanks.  That helps a lot.

Thanks, guys.  I'll probably have to go to one of the cheaper stores right now because we're really having financial trouble.  Maybe later on down the road, once I've sold a few bears and can scrape the money, I'll get a nicer one from a camera store, but right now I'm going to have to be cheap unless someone wants to swop one of my bears for a camera they don't use anymore, lol.

Aww, bearlove.

Has she been adopted yet?

I haven't seen any with teeth and claws, so I don't know how I feel about them, but they need love too.  You just have to be careful so they don't bite you.

A friend of mine gave me a little fuzzy bear today.  I asked someone to look at his tag because she said she had had him for 24 years.  The tag on his bottom said Gund Little D.J. 1986.  I don't have a picture, so if someone has one of these bears, can you please post him?  I'm all kinds of excited because I've been really wanting a bear from the 80s.  I'm obsessed with all things 80s, especially the bears.  He looks brand new, so I think he's spent his life as her display bear and he hasn't gotten a lot of cuddles.  He's getting them now, though.

Thanks.  I think I'm just now starting to visualize what you're talking about.  A flattie is when there are two pieces, a teddy bear shaped front and back.  Everything is already drawn out and you have two flat teddy bear halves to sew together.  You backstitch around the side of the bear.  This one is a flattie of a different shape than I've made, but there's a separate face piece and separate ears.  I figured I could start with this one since it's sort of what I'm used to, but with some extra steps rather than going straight from flatties to patterns with a bunch of pieces right away.  I can't work on her right now because I'm out of thread and I have another flattie that I need to finish and then I can work on her.

Hey, I just got a bright idea.  What would happen if I kept the ears open and then after I've sewn her up, before I turn her, I backstitch the ears onto her head?  I'll probably stick some pins in the spot where I want them to go so I'll know where I'm at.  I'll probably still have to have some visual assistance to make sure I get the stitches small enough and don't wind up dropping the ears, but if I stitched them on the outside I'd have a time trying not to get the knot to show.  What do you guys think of this?  Or should I get the lady that cut it out to read the pattern directions first???

Is this anything like how the zotty bears have open mouths?  I can't tell how they did it, but his bottom lip is pretty hard like maybe there could be wire in there.  Of course his head is major league hard like probably it's stuffed with woodwool.

The thing about this bear is that she is sort of a flattie, but from a different pattern than I've used before.  Joanne Livingston sent me a book of a bunch of teddy bear patterns.  The lady from church that helped me cut it out thought this might be the easiest pattern for me to start with because it's basically a flattie except the face and ears are sewn on separately.  There are no darts in the pattern and I don't want to make the poor lady cut out anymore pieces unless she can see them.  I have a major scissor phobia, so I havwe a hard time cutting patterns.

@Boogaloo Bears, I think you should send that bear to someone who will love him with their eyes closed.  Poor bear!!!  I wish I could adopt everybody's first bears if they are ashamed of them.

This is definitely not bear related, but maybe y'all can help me.  Mainly what I do on FB other than upload stuff is read the news feed, but I get a lot of horoscopes and stuff like that and just now I found something kind of off-color that I'd rather not be displayed.  How do I get that stuff not to be displayed?  I see the remove button, but I'm not sure whether it will just delete the one post or if I could accidentally block one of my friends, which I definitely don't want to do.  It just takes me so long to read through everything that I'd rather not have to wade through all that jazz.  With a screen reader you have to read everything.  You can't skip over sections as easily.  Thanks.

Cool.  I hope I don't have to use menus.  I'd like to be able to hook it to my computer and get the photos off that way, but if it's the same keystrokes every time, I'll be able to memorize it.  And cool about the blind photographers.  I don't think I really want to be a photographer, but if I'm going to sell bears, I better learn how to take pictures or else have to depend on other people to take them for me, which is a pain.  I guess I was dragged kicking and screaming into getting a camera.  I'll probably get a cheapy right now because all I need to do is show you what my bears look like.

At the first of the month I'm going to hopefully get a point and shoot digital camera.  I'm told that they have cameras now where you can point it at whatever you're taking pictures of and click and it will focus and everything for you.  If I can do this, where should I take pictures at?  Should I carry the bear outside or do it in the house?  Also, how should I hold the bear?  I'll probably post pics of some of my collection when I get it for y'all to tell me how I'm doing if that's okay.  What do you guys think about this?  Joanne, would you mind helping me crop them because I'm not even going to try that.  The last time I did that it just looked like a blob.  If you join Teddy Bears Forum and look for my post about Prot, you can see why I won't even think about messing with editing pics.

I've been trying to get audiobooks and braille books about bears and have been hitting dead air.  I think I may try closing the ears and then sewing them onto the head after she is stuffed.  I think I may have found someone to show me how to embroider so I can do noses and mouths also, but I don't know when that will be.  I have to finish this flattie that is in the works right now before I start on this new pattern.  The flattie that will be on facebook and TT will have a plastic nose and probably the new bear from this pattern will too because this lady is very busy and I don't want to leave her waiting that long.  You can't stuff your bears before you put on the safety noses I use and I don't want to leave her sitting here flat for several weeks because she's going to be my bear and I want to be able to enjoy her.  The lady that said she may be able to teach me is my pastor's wife and she stays very busy.  I hope you guys can tolerate plastic noses until then because I don't want to try something like this until I have someone to walk me through.  Oh man, I just hijacked my own thread.

Sorry for being blunt.  I really don't know the names of a lot of stitches because I sort of taught myself how to do this.  I don't know what stitches are called.  I think that's the biggest thing that I'm having trouble with.  I'm trying to picture doing what I call a ladder stitch, don't know if that's the right one, on the outside of the bear's head.  It might be better if someone would call me.  Sometimes it's hard to explain things like this only using words and I really appreciate all your help.

Sorry, but that's clear as mud.  This is the first time I've done any type of bear other than a flattie.

I finally have a bear in a new pattern cut out.  She's still sort of a flattie but with a different shape, but there is a separate muzzle piece that is a triangle and separate ears.  The two ear pieces that you sew together are little bitty half circles that you're supposed to sew together wrong-side-out and leave a whole so you can turn.  After you do that, do you ladder stitch them closed or leave the opening?  Should I sew them onto the head before or after the bear is turned?  I just really need someone to tell me how to do this.  Those things are so little that I like to have someone with eyeballs there when I'm working with them because if I drop them, they're gone.

I don't know what this board was like in the glory days, but it's probably one of the most active forums I'm on.  It seems like if I go away for a few hours I come back and there are a bunch of pages with new posts.  The only bad thing is that the most popular section is where people post pics of their bears rather than the discussion sections that I would be able to participate in.