Teddy Talk: Creating, Collecting, Connecting

great bear, Linda!  I wondered where you'd been ;-)

thanks, everyone!  (and esp. thanks, Tami!!!!!  :hug:  :hug:  :hug: )  :dance:

I'm still going retro with my tradional teddy pattern, playing with different furs and fabrics in my stash. . .this is Burliegh, carefully cut from a vintage faux fur coat that was shaded/printed to look like fur pelts

Burliegh is 18" with leather paw pads and nose.  he is a traditional 5-way jointed teddy and is filled with a combination of plastic & silicone pellets and woodwool, for a squishy, huggable heft

thanks, everyone!  (I have to admit it was fun to work with some different colors for a change  :dance: )

Herbie!  - because what else are you going to call a shaggy, moss-green bear???

18", shulte dense matted mohair in a rich mossy green with a puple leather vest lined in a purple and olive silk dobby.  5-way jointed, trapunto leather paw pads, sculpted leather nose, German glass eyes.  available.  email or pm me for details

thank you, Kim & Olga  :hug:  :hug:

thanks, everyone!  I was playing around last night and noticed Benny is very close is size to some of my older character bears, so I tried making him an outfit just to see if some of my clothing patterns would work - to my great surprise, I didn't have to do much adjusting at all

thanks, friends  :hug:  :hug:  :hug:

thanks, everyone!  Benny is a new design that I've been playing with for the last month or so.  I wanted kind of a mashup of realistic and teddy bear, leaving out all the time-consuming armature but retaining the sculptural body shape I've working on the past year or so  :hug:

he's magnificent, Karen, love those big paws!   :clap:  :clap:  :clap:

Benny is 18", made of Schulte feathered mohair with traspunto leather paw pads.  he is heavy, floppy, cuddly, 5-way jointed, filled with silicone beads & woodwool for a modern take on an old-fashioned crunchy feel. available on etsy

my mother is 78 and has been on Facebook for years.  trust me, if she can do it, you can

Berny is 18" (12" seated) and made of dense wavy shulte mohair in a rich brown. he has trapunto leather paw pads, a leather nose and leather eyelids over German glass eyes. his 5 disk joints, and s-type arms hark towards my take on a 'traditional' teddy bear. available, $495 – email or pm me if you're interested

no one ever said they were 'just' displayed, Krista said it was possible to change the way they were displayed.  there are those of us out there who believe a piece can have two functions, and be both cuddled and proudly displayed as a work of art.  I find no dichotomy in this.

thanks, Sue Ann & Lenora.  :hug:  Mortimer is the only bear I've ever kept, and 15 years later I'm still dying to 'fix' him, but there is no straighting that nose. I thought you cut in the direction of the pile, knowing nothing about cutting straight-of-grain, and so cut out his nose pieces on a diagonal. . . they twisted like dorothy. . .

the worst part was, people kept ordering Mortimers, and I couldn't replicate that damned nose. . .I finally started telling people the pattern had been accidentily destroyed

mortimer, my first bear, circa 1996, with his big wonky nose

he is adorable!  well done!

he is wonderful!

cutecutecute!

lol. . . thanks, Bobbie!  this is actually a new studio space.  I closed my shop this past april & moved both home and studio into a loft space in the same building.  I used all the shelves, counters and fittings from my shop, but I have 4x the space, including 2 8" workbenchs that I can walk complelely around and a terrific bank of windows looking out over the Delaware River.  the studio space is situtated between the living area and the sleeping area, so there's no way to avoid work anymore!

and fortunately - or unfortunately - I rent, so the property taxes aren't my problem ;-)

I have to agree with Joanne & Peter - other social media has drawn a lot of people away.  I find it's almost impossible to keep up, even with FB. 

and Peter, I think teddy bears seem to be evolving faster than usual, too.  I think maybe part of that is the influx of russian/eastern european bear makers - they have such a different take on things, and needle-felting certainly had a huge effect.

re:big bear. . . I love to make big bears but they are a very hard sell, particularly these days, but pretty much always.  case in point - I started out making very big bears, at my first show I had 12 Bear Noels ranging from 24" to 36" (standing upright) including a 36" tall bear with 36" long companion, Brogar & Iorek.

thye were the centerpiece of my u-shaped booth, and I found a lady staring at them with desire, and heard her tell her husband that she absolutely HAD to have them, no matter what the price.  her husband smiled at her patiently, and said 'but honey, where are you go to put them?"  she quickly said 'oh, on the mantel!' at which point her hubby just started laughing, because the bears at the show were standing on their own 3x5ft table and her mantle was only a foot wide.   I eventually sold all of the bear noels, but size was always an issue.  even back then, ('97) there was a serious trend towards minatures simply because collectors had run out of space.  I've scaled back to mosly 18" and under, esp. the last 4-5 years.  I wonder if that part of industry-wide trend?

prettyprettypretty

I want them all

love is too small of a word

adorable :clap:  :clap:  :clap: