Design Challenge 6 & 7: Trevor!

Okay, I'm completely out of sync now!  This post represents my Design Challenge numbers 6 & 7 - from last Friday and the Friday before(!)  This time I made Trevor (above left).  He is a re-design of Bingo (above right).  I do actually still like Bingo's design - he has a very narrow, doll-like body - but Trevor has the lovely, cheerful, plumpness of a traditional teddy bear.  And he's pink!  I always get asked if I have pink bears!

I re-designed all of him except his face, but my favourite part is definitely his arms.  Take a look at the pictures below: his paws pads face down rather than inwards, which makes his arms look much more realistic.  I need to make a big bear with these arms!  (Or rather, with a bigger version of these arms.)  Anyway, Trevor in now in my Etsy shop.

Some other stuff that's being happening to us recently...

We've been accepted at the Brett Gallery, which is part of Bridge Farm Barns in Monks Eleigh in Suffolk.  It's a really lovely place!  Among all the other beautiful things, you will now find two hedgehogs, my last crow, and two little bears.  I highly recommend a visit.  After all, they not only have bears, but syrup sponge and custard in the cafe!

I created another Etsy Treasury - this time on affordable art.  It's called Buy Some Art!  Do take a look, and like and favourite, so more people see it.  Ta!

Finally, I am running a Christmas give-away on Facebook, to win one of my little robins (below).  To enter the giveway, you just need to like and share the giveaway post on Facebook - use this link here.

Design Challenge 4 & 5

I may have mentioned this before (more than once), but when I first started making bears, I used to copy all the patterns into big ring-bound notebooks.  These notebooks got pulled about quite a bit - since I reuse and modify pattern pieces all the time - so they were frequently left lying about in entirely the wrong place!  

Anyway, one day they just disappeared.  I assume they got thrown away by accident - whatever, it was my fault entirely.  I [eventually] took the positive viewpoint that it gave me the chance to start entirely afresh, but there were quite a few patterns which I desperately regretted having lost.

One of them was the face and body of this bear (below), Marmite.

I used them quite a lot, in various different incarnations.  The head design is just very sweet.  The body, although you can't see it very well here, had a lovely, bulgy sort of stomach.

So last week I had a go at recreating the body, and this week I tried for the face.  Both of them still need tweaking I think, but they came out quite well, and since I have a show coming up, and I really ought to be making bears for that, I put the face and body together with the arms and legs of previous design challenges.

Mouse is the result.  I am quite pleased with him.  He is quite petite and the body has a lovely pear shape to it - something I hadn't remembered from the old design.  I once had an idea for an art deco-style bear, made entirely of triangular shapes.  Mouse fits the bill rather well - I might have a go at adapting his design again.

I have put Mouse on Etsy - find his listing here!

Oooh - and one more thing!  I have put together another Etsy treasury of beautiful handmade hedgehogs from lots of different artists/makers.  There are some crackers - have a look here.

Design Challenge 3

Hi there.  I made my deadline for the Challenge - woohoo!  

I am slightly delayed.  I spent the morning making these - biscotti for a local church bazaar (from this recipe)!  Funny, I love these but I only make them once a year, and when I do there are never enough to actually eat - they all have to be bagged up.  I should make 2 lots at once but I never remember.

 Anyway, having created a fur border around the foot pads last week, I thought the hand pads(?)  would be easy.  I had to throw out a good few arms though, before I got it right.  I think it is because the 'hand', in my pattern, is at a slight angle to the arm.  Because it isn't symmetrical, like the foot pad, it wasn't straight-forward.  I got there in the end though.

Here is the pattern without the fur border - just a little of pile from the back of the hand visible.

And here is the  same paw pad with the new border (below).  The base of the pad looks a little strange, but you can see by looking at the picture of the original design (above) that it is supposed to be at an angle.  The first time I tried it, I forgot this and tried to sew the border in an even circle around the pad.  It took me a while to realise why it wasn't working.

Below is a picture of the two arms side-by-side.  There is a slight choppiness around the new border, because of the multiple darts needed.  I don't think there's a whole lot that can be done about that, but I think, with a different mohair, it wouldn't be so noticeable. 

Any preferences? - please let me know!  :-)  

Design Challenge 2

First an apology (and an excuse) for the lack of output after announcing a design challenge!  Since I posted my first result on Monday (the robin redesign), I thought I would try for the Monday every week.  Then I got caught up with hedgehogs, so I only started on Sunday (stupid), and needless to say, even by Monday evening, I didn't have anything to post.

I felt that it wasn't really in the spirit of the thing to be cross about it, and just throw in the towel and say, "oh well never mind then!" so I persisted in looking at it this week and I finally got it done yesterday.  So here, without further ado...

The brief was to create a sort of furry border around the edge of the footpad.  It's a bit difficult to describe.  This is a picture of Leon's feet (below).  The problem doesn't show up very well because he is quite fluffy, but when you have short fur and trapunto toes (like Leon's here), the foot pad is pushed out in a convex shape when the foot is stuffed, and the toes start to look too prominent.

Below is the existing design I started with, pre-challenge.  Again, the problem would have shown up better with short mohair but I chose this because, whilst  mohair is expensive, I don't get on with this particular mohair very well - and I have loads of it (of course)!

Below is the 'after' pic - with border.  I do like this; it's very teddy-like somehow.  However, the challenge did make me appreciate the old design more too(!)  One of the problems with the border is that it uses up space on the footpad, so it would be difficult to squeeze trapunto features (like Leon's in the first picture) on there  now, without making the foot bigger.  And that would make it out of proportion with the leg.  I could always make the border narrower, I suppose, but as you can probably see in the top picture, the trapunto design takes up every bit of space there is - any reduction in space at all is going to be difficult.  Maybe trapunto toes and a border just don't work together.

And here are the alternative leg designs side-by-side, as if attached to a bear.  What do you think - any opinions?  I would love to know if you prefer one or the other!

Design Challenge

One of my favourite blogs is that of Ann Wood and, a couple of months ago she began a sketchbook challenge, where she undertook to draw or paint something every day for a year.  See her original post on this here.  I have read similar things by people who write - for example, Jack London and Henry Miller both thought that, if you want to write seriously, you need to make a habit out of it.  You need to do it every day, rain or shine, regardless of whether you're 'in the mood'.  It doesn't matter if you're writing rubbish - the point is that you're making yourself comfortable with the act of writing so that, when inspiration does strike, there's nothing to stop you taking advantage of it.

I'm always distracted by this kind of talk because I used to love writing and, although I don't really enjoy it in the same way anymore, I still wonder sometimes if I could be a writer of some kind.

However, as it turns out, I'm not a writer; I am a designer and maker of teddy bears and other creatures.  The 'designer' bit comes rather sporadically though.  I have been thinking for a long while that perhaps I ought to try to set aside time - not just hours or days, but a period of months - for working on new designs.  However, I suspect design is similar to the examples given above of painting and writing - it's something you need to do doggedly, repeatedly, over and over again, to stand any chance of getting really good.

So, how about a challenge!

Designing every day would really leave no time for anything else, and designing a whole bear - even just every week - would be similarly hobbling.  So how about trying to design a feature of some kind every week?

For example:

• A 'spare tyre'
• An Asterix-style nose
• Skinny legs on a large body - e.g. as if I were designing a donkey
• A bulge around the edge of a foot pad, so the pad - even with trapunto toes - looks recessed
• A sort of webbed effect beneath the arms and above the legs, like real bears seem to have.
• A ball and socket joint, of the kind that some of the old Steiff bears used to have.

I have many more examples of thing I would like to try, which would fit this challenge perfectly.  I could make them on their own - e.g. a particular limb shape - or graft them on to an existing pattern where required (as with the spare tyre, above).

It doesn't have to be something big - just something which allows me to  discover something new.  And I'm not going to set a time limit.  It will just be an ongoing challenge, for however long it lasts.

I have made a start on this!  Almost exactly a year ago, I made a couple of robins from pieces of scrap mohair.  They were very sweet, and sold quickly, but the design wasn't quite what I wanted it to be...

There were a few issues, but the main one is the frontage: she does look a bit like she is sucking her stomach in for the photo(!)  I wanted a really round, fat jolly-looking robin, so I revisited the pattern again this week...

I'm fresh out of red mohair scraps, and I wanted something that was a bit more sustainable anyway.  So the brown is a woven synthetic that I found at Franklins (it has a very slight pile to it); the orange/red is a heavy wool fabric I got from a carpets-and-curtains-shops.  It feels a lot like felt in fact(!) but it is much sturdier than any felt I've seen.

What do you think?  The mohair I used last year definitely added a sort of shaggy charm (but then mohair always does), but when I was making these robins I was trying to think of something that I would want to put on a Christmas tree.  We don't usually have a tree, but if we did (and if these had loops for hanging), I think they would be perfect.  The markings are a lot clearer than on the mohair version, so I think they'd stand out better among the pine needles and the other decorations.

Most importantly, the shape of the stomach is much better.