Teddy Talk: Creating, Collecting, Connecting

Youtube has been enourmously helpful when it comes to learning stitches. A few things are still confusing to me but hopefully I will get the hang of it. I've ordered a few more reference books that will hopefully help!

And yeah I feel like a large bear would try my patience as well. I have small hands and don't mind working with little things (I used to do a lot of sculpting) but I think maybe this one was a wee bit too small (under 3 inches!) for my first attempt.

Thanks for the recommendations! I decided to order Teddy Bear Studio and The Encyclopedia of Teddy-Bear Making Techniques. I threw in Masterpieces in Miniature by Gerry Grey for good measure since I've been looking for a collector book and needed that free Amazon shipping.

When you say "come from the back to the front and pull the needle through the loop" do you mean come from the back through the fabric to the front?

Thanks for the tips! I'm still trying on this little guy since I figure if I put it aside now, I'll never come back to it because of all the mistakes. Better to mess up and learn on one than start another and mess that one up too. I think I'm getting the hang of keeping my seam allowance more consistent.

I did have a problem when turning and stuffing the body where the stitches ripped out of the fabric! Oops! I had a similar issue when putting on the eyes. I was trying to set them back in the face and the eye tore through and went inside the head. Did I pull too hard or is that just the quality of the fabric? It's the fabric that came with the kit so I'm not exactly sure what kind it is.

I'm still completely new to both bear-making and sewing in general and want to get a better grasp on basic bear making techniques. Since my main interest is minis, I bought How to Make Enchanting Miniature Teddy Bears and it's been helpful but I get the impression it assumes some prior bearmaking, or at least sewing experience.

I'm very much a visual learner and have trouble understanding text descriptions of sewing stitches and other processes, so I'm trying to find a good book (or even an online guide) that provides clear visual instructions in the form of diagrams and/or photographs of as many of the steps as possible. I can read and re-read a description but it never makes as much sense to me as just seeing a picture of what I'm supposed to do. There are so many bear-making books out there (and some are very pricey) so I wanted to ask what book you guys would recommend for detailed visual instructions and someone with no sewing experience?

Thanks for all the feedback guys! It's very helpful.

Ahh that makes more sense now. So the snout point just bends around the round piece of the gusset? I was just having a hard time seeing how all the pieces fit together before. Ironically, it's very easy for me to translate 3D into 2D, but apparently I am just terrible at doing it the other way around. 

This pattern didn't actually state the seam allowance but I have Making Enchanted Miniature Teddy Bears and in that she says there is no seam allowance for minis. Does that mean I stitch as close to the edge of the fabric as the weave allows?

I'm using tweezers with bent tips. They seem to work pretty decently, I just wasn't actually paying attention to the method in which I stuffed (just filling the space). I'll try being more deliberate about it and see if that helps! And nope, not too critical at all! All of the advice everyone is giving is really helpful so far. I welcome any criticism so I can learn where and how to improve.

For those recommending stitching the gusset in place at the nose, is there any particular stitch I should use? And any special way I should tie that off? I don't think I'm tying things off right as I had some stitches come loose at the base of the neck where I thought I knotted. I'm sure the fact that this is not only my first mini bear but also my first time even using a sewing needle isn't helping. I probably should have started with something bigger, or just practiced stitches first...I was a little too eager to get started I guess.

So, I started on my Tinker Kitty's head yesterday. This was my very first time ever sewing anything, and I got off to a bit of a rough start. Some of the mistakes are obvious even to me despite my lack of sewing knowledge, but I would really love some input from the trained eyes out there.

Obviously the stitching is a mess. On minis like this, how much seam allowance should I use? I think next time I'm going to actually mark my seam allowances since I had trouble keeping them consistent.

I had a LOT of trouble with the gusset. I feel like I don't entirely understand how it's supposed to attach to the other two head pieces at the nose. The end of the gusset piece was rounded, but the top of the jaw piece seemed to come to a point when sewn together so it didn't seem to match up properly. Did I do something wrong there? Where should I start connecting the gusset to the head, and was I correct in connecting the two head pieces together from neck to jaw before attaching the gusset?

The muzzle shape doesn't look right at all to me. This is what it's supposed to look like: http://emilyfarmer.com/images/Cat_Kits.html but my muzzle isn't rounded and there's no indent where it meets the rest of the face, it's just kind of...a pointy slope. Is that a mistake in the sewing or the stuffing or both?

Lastly, what is the best way to tie off thread and end stitches? I was having trouble with both.

I'd appreciate any help anyone can provide! This is so new to me...yesterday I was literally starting at square one, looking up how to tie off thread and how to do a back stitch. Any visuals that you can provide would really help. I'm a very visual learner and just reading about how stuff should be done has made it difficult for me to understand without pictures.

Woops, sorry that didn't help but glad you got it working again! I've never used safari so I don't know any of those shortcuts.

You may have hit an F key by accident. In Google Chrome F11 hides that bar. I'm not sure what it is in other browsers, it may be the same or it may be F12 or something else.

My cat likes to walk on that key a lot and leave me wondering where my address bar went!