Orville

I cannot believe it's been a week since I posted the pictures of Max!  I'm meant to be being super-productive - what is going on!?

I think it might just be that I've been doing a lot of days on the desk at the Art & Craft Centre - I've had two full weekends and Wednesdays as well.  I swear I have only spent three of the seven days working on Orville - this bear...

Orville is my third attempt at needle-felting - what do you think?  I wasn't keen at first: he has a very bald face.  I was trying to get the eyelids right, and as far as I can tell, you can't have needle-felting and mohair fluff at the same time - the former flattens down the latter.  So once I'd finished the eyelids - which took a long, long time - I suddenly realised that there was no fur left on his face, which came as quite a shock.

But I have warmed to him - I do think he looks quite realistic.  Possible next time I would place the eyes in a bit (and down a bit), so the bald bit is smaller.  And perhaps I would trim the actual fur, so there's more of a subtle graduation between the face and the head.  It would also be interesting to have a go at forehead wrinkles - or a frown!

But I like Orville's shaggy brown fur and jug ears.  I like his paw pads too.  They became a casualty of the dark photos, but trust me - they're terrific!

Isaac the Moon Bear

I think this is my new favourite bear of this design - Isaac, the moon bear!  He is a strange combination - the pattern isn't a particularly realistic shape (not at all in fact), but the markings and pile length are quite true to life.  I wouldn't usually have done this - it was just that, being the ninth bear I cut out in this pattern, I was getting desperate to do something a bit different.  Strangely, it does seem to work.

Today's project is also a bit different: it is to be an extra large version of this design - although not a moon bear, unfortunately.

I can see there are good things and bad things about cutting out lots of bears in advance.  On the up side, I get desperate to do something different, and so maybe take a few risks - try things I wouldn't normal do.  On the down side, because I don't know how these risks are going to turn out, I can't go on to develop them one stage further in the next one I cut out.

Ah well, maybe in the future, a slightly bigger moon bear in this pattern!

Dominic

I have finished my latest bear.  His name is Dominic and - like Hugo and Pongo before him - he has an internal wire armature, and his limbs are unjointed.  I am still not certain about this.  I do think the rigid, unjointed body is very appealing.  Maybe it's the realistic thing - there is something very unrealistic about a bear whose limbs you can move as you please.

However, I have never managed to make these bears as sturdy as I would like them to be.  I suppose I am making something that is fragile and breakable - like a piece of pottery or (and I thought of this when I was making the teddy bear bouquets) the bunches of twisted willow you can buy from florist shops.  When you buy something breakable, you treat it with due care.  The problem is that people don't expect teddy bears to be breakable - they are characteristically hard-wearing and long-suffering - so I worry that these bears will get bumped around and the wire armature damaged.

I'm thinking perhaps a note on the label to explain their construction might be a good idea.

What I would really like to do is to make a bear standing on all four feet, but in walking pose - rather than having all four feet flat on the ground.  As you can see below, Dominic pose is actually quite close to this.  Balance is going to be a problem though.  As he is, he leans onto his lifted front left leg, and his rear right leg goes up in the air.  When you pull his rear right leg down to rest on the floor, it looks great, but he won't stay that way - even with steel shot in that rear right leg.

I suppose his front right leg could be angled in slightly, but effectively it is already quite close to the centre - as close as it can be without looking unnatural.  Hmmm.