Pouffe

Merry Christmas!

I can't believe I'm posting on Christmas Day(!) Unfortunately, I'm already over the Christmas feeling - if I ever had it at all - and I'm a bit impatient to get all this holiday merriment over with, so I can get back to work.

I am not going to make the five-day shop display that I mentioned in my last post. I just didn't give myself enough notice. Really, I'm the kind of person that needs to have everything organized a month in advance. Anyway, the idea was that I was going to have a sort of morning-after-the-Christmas-party kind of display - empty wine bottles, fallen wineglasses, sagging tinsel and party poppers, torn paper hats, and all the bears snoring their heads off. To this end, I was prepared to sew heavy eyelids on every bear (the natural state of all my current bears is wide awake and alert - a sort of sans eyebrows effect). I was at the Art & Craft Centre with my tape measure, trying out eyelid templates, when a thought suddenly popped into my head.

*... sleep masks!*

Why on earth didn't I think of that before? Anyway, unfortunately I don't have time to make 20-odd teddy bear sleep masks (never mind 20-odd sets of eyelids) - so maybe next year.

In the meantime, this display idea prodded me into searching the web for a pouffe pattern - for the bears to sleep on. I found a cracker at DesignSponge (see the tutorial here). Naturally, I had to change it round a bit. I decided to make it out of cream faux fur. The pattern suggests that you back the outer fabric in plain cotton - and this is what is recommended for faux fur anyway, when you're making bears, to stop it from stretching.

I have never tried using faux fur before (see post here), so I thought the pouffe would be a good opportunity to try it out. It hasn't quite gone to plan (naturally). The idea is that you create each 'face' of the pouffe out of twelve segments, which meet in the centre, like slices of a cake. The tutorial recommends that you sew each face in two lots of six pieces. This gives you two long straight edges to sew together - thus avoiding the possibility of having a hole in the centre, where the segments meet.

Anyway, in the photo in the tutorial, the six segments all meet neatly, on the head of a pin as it were. When I tried it with the faux fur, I think I must have sewn my seam allowances too small because actually the 'point' of each segment was about a centimetre wide - so at the point where they met, they actually receded from the straight edge.

Is this making any sense?

So I decided to sew the two lots of six pieces together in two lines of stitches, instead of one - leaving the hole in the middle. I will then (so the plan goes), draw the hole in with a drawstring, and then - once the pouffe is turned right side out and stuffed - cover it with a button. The button is recommended in the tutorial anyway - to pull in the centre of the pouffe.

This is where I am so far...

This is still inside-out, of course(!)

And I'm thinking of using these buttons for the centre...

Or maybe these ones...

Anyway, the tutorial recommends that you pull in the centre of the pouffe with fishing line. Nobody's into fishing in my family, so I'm going to have to go out and find a specialist shop. So, just waiting on that! I am actually (with my elbows touching a wooden table, just in case), looking forward to seeing how this turns out. The faux fur is gorgeous! I will post the results (if it turns out alright - ahem).

Faux furs

Finding ways of lowering prices is an ongoing project in my shop. Whilst I don't always get the actual items right (looking back, for example, I seem to have gone through a phase of undue appreciation for the smooth, shiny look of lamination), the biggest problem I have is with price. Bear collectors are a different kettle of fish, but in terms of the general public it often seems that people do like my bears - but certainly not at that price!

Part of this is due to the fact that they're hand-made and so take longer to make - although I'm sure I could be quicker about it if I really thought industrial.

With the teddy bears though, the most significant factor in the pricing is probably the cost of the materials. Mohair costs between £25 and £125 per metre - and occasionally more than that. I have only once ever calculated the cost of making a bear properly. I was making a big, 19" bear - for which I usually charge £250. Calculating the time it took at minimum wage rates, then adding the cost of the materials, it came to almost exactly £250.

I don't sell a lot of big bears though, and with smaller bears - although the materials cost less - the time it takes to make them doesn't decrease proportionally. I'm reluctant to work out the costs exactly (and burst my own bubble), but I have a sneaking suspicion that smaller bears pay far less than minimum wage.

Anyway, all this is not by way of complaint (it's a lovely job - such as it is); I'm just trying to figure out how to make it work.

I read something a while ago about bear-makers using faux fur. In my [limited] experience, faux fur often comes on a knitted backing - which makes it far too stretchy for bear-making - and tends to shed like crazy. However, this - so I'm told - is a mistaken impression. You do apparently get very high quality faux furs, with a woven backing. In fact, faux fur can sometimes be more expensive than mohair (gulp!). You can get good quality faux fur for considerably lower prices too though.

I am of two minds about it. On the one hand, anything that lowers prices must be a good thing; on the other, going synthetic seems to be just one more nail in the coffin of good quality, hand-made, sustainable, eco-friendly teddy bears - the making of which has always seemed to have something old-fashioned about it, to me.

Another problem with lowering prices in this way is related to my 'not suitable for children' policy. As I have discovered, I can't make teddy bears for children because the costs of having them safety tested are astronomical. With the teddy bears I do sell, I am required by law to make it absolutely clear that they are not for children - and a sign/label to that effect is not necessarily sufficient. Apparently, even if they have such a label, if they look like they were intended to appeal to children, it may be considered that you are selling them as toys.

Given this, one of the factors which I think makes it clear that my bears are not toys, is the price. A teddy bear priced at £250 appears more as a collectible than as a toy.

If I make the bears in faux fur - and thus, reduce costs considerably - the price tag will be less of a deterrent to people looking to buy a teddy bear for a small child.

Perhaps I am being too pessimistic - or too optimistic about the degree to which the use of faux fur will cut costs. A 19" bear made in faux fur might cost considerably less than his mohair equivalent - but the price may still be between £100 and £150, which is still expensive for a toy.

Another difficulty (I am indeed being pessimistic) is how I would explain the difference between the price of a mohair bear and that of a synthetic bear, where they were of similar size. I do explain everything in great detail on the label, but people don't always read these.

I could put the faux fur bears altogether under a big sign saying 'cheap synthetic bears', I suppose! That's really mean - but it illustrates the problem exactly: how to point out the reason for the price differential without making the faux fur bears sound 'cheap and nasty'.

Maybe I could be a lot more subtle about it. (Subtle - moi?) Maybe it's not necessary to say anything relating the price to the fabric. If I were to make the faux fur bears slightly different from the mohair bears - in some aspect other than the fabric - then I could market them as a new and distinct range. Customers may then accept the idea of a less costly range of bears without the necessity for insulting signs/labels.

Okay, I have talked myself into it. Thanks for listening(!) I will order some faux fur swatches, and take it from there.