Christmas Greetings to All!
In the last few days before the Christmas holiday, I'll show you how to stitch a quick-to-make Christmas gift for children. It's cute! If you are an avid sewer, most likely you'll have everything you need to make it! If you aren't, you can still gather the needed supplies and materials and make at least one before the holiday weekend.
In the past two weeks, I had two sewing lessons with my little student - I'll call her little Miss M. Over a year ago she and I had a series of sewing lessons at her home. You can read about that blog post HERE. Little Miss M loves to sew and this month she wanted to make teddy bears to give her siblings for Christmas. I searched PINTEREST and found this cute easy-to-do pattern for her to make three teddies out of fleece.
It's really a darling little teddy bear!
This is super simple to make! And it only uses two pieces of fabric the size of your printer paper!
Alas - I forgot to take photos of our sewing stint but after helping little Miss M with her project, I just finished three cute little teddies for Christmas gifts. And made them in an unconventional way. I call them Shabby Chic teddy bears!
The website for the pattern and instructions is listed at the end of this post.
Though you can get the full instructions from that website, I've included here what I did as I did not use fleece to make a typical teddy bear. Little Miss M made two brown fleece and a black and red plaid fleece.
How to Make a Shabby Chic Teddy Bear
Here are the materials and supplies I used to make three teddy bears:
Fabric (2 pieces of each kind - 8.5 x 11 inches in size)
rose floral woven fabric
black and white polka dot flannel
rose floral print flannel
thread, embroidery floss, ribbon, buttons for eyes
pink felt for cheeks and heart
printer and 8.5 x 11 paper to print pattern on
sewing machine
tweezers and wooden spoon
scissors, needles
fiberfill
FriXion heat-erasable pen for marking facial features (optional)
DIRECTIONS
Print out the pattern for as many bears as you want to make. You can't reuse the pattern as you'll be stitching through the paper onto the fabric and the pattern will be torn off. Save the head and tummy area as you'll need it to cut out the cheeks and heart from felt and to mark the face for stitching placement.
If you want to make a typical soft teddy bear with fleece, then it won't matter which side is which, but if you're using fabric like I did, make sure you place right sides together before pinning the pattern on top of both layers of fabric. I forgot to do that, and after stitching it, I realized my big boo-boo and had to ditch that one and start over again!
Here is what I did:
Pin the paper pattern over the two pieces of fabric. Stitch through the paper on the black lines. You will see the photo below that I marked one leg area with blue pencil where I didn't want to stitch so I'd have a small opening in order to turn the bear right side out.
Stitch very slow on your machine especially around the corners. I find it fun to stitch through paper. After stitching, remove pins and carefully tear the paper pattern off. I found using tweezers to be helpful removing tiny bits of paper from the stitching.
After removing all the paper, cut a seam allowance around the whole bear - about a 1/4 inch wide. Then snip the corners to make it easy to turn the bear right side out. See photo below this one.
The photos below are of the black and white polka dot flannel. What it looks like stitched and when it gets trimmed.
I used the erasable pen to mark the leg line where it did not get stitched. Just so I could see the edge of the leg.
See the full directions and photos from the website where to make the tiny snips.
Here's the rose floral fabric after I turned little teddy right side out.
Stuff little teddy with fiberfill. Stuff well and make sure the ears and appendages are stuffed well. I used the handle of a wooden spoon to help poke the stuffing into place. It took me about 30 minutes to do this. Truly! It does take some time to stuff it properly. Then stitch up the leg opening by hand.
Cut out the little cheeks and heart from felt. Use the paper pattern for the shapes. Stitch them on with regular thread. Stitch on button eyes and embroider the mouth. I didn't bother with embroidering the heart detail for the nose area. You do what you want with your bear! I didn't have matching eyes for this one but the buttons are in the same color family.
Here's the finished teddy! Use whatever size ribbon you feel like using.
Here are photos of the other two bears I made from flannel. I purchased more buttons for eyes after I finished the pink floral one.
Aren't they simply adorable? They are about six inches long.
I hope you have fun making one or more of these for gifts - any time of the year, too!
Here is the website where you can find the full directions and pattern. Click HERE.
HAPPY SEWING! MERRY CHRISTMAS!
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