Miguel

The teddy bear joints finally arrived this morning, so I was able to finish Miguel. Here he is...

And finally... a failed attempt at photographing light and dark bears together - here he is with Wanda, my newly-named white bear of the same design.

I have been thinking... I'm always really terrible at decorating bears - once I've finished sewing them up, they look 'finished' to me, and I don't like to complicate things any further. However, having said that, lots of times I look at bears made by other people and think that, what really makes them perfect, is the dress they're wearing, the hat, the chair, the umbrella, the butterfly, etc.

The solution, I'm thinking, is to create what is patently an unfinished bear. I remember going into a gift shop once and seeing these little bears made out of plain white cotton. They were sold in a box, with a felt tip pen, and the idea was that you got to customise your own bear.

I'm not all that keen on the idea of a bear customised with felt tip pen, but what does appeal is the idea of a very plain, blank bear - made in cotton or muslin - that requires decoration. It seems to me that there are so many more options, in decorating a plain cotton bear, than there are in decorating a bear with all his fur in place (that sounds terrible!). What I mean is that, to me, the fur provides enough detail in itself - it needs nothing extra. A plain cotton teddy bear might be more receptive to embellishment.

So, that is the next project.