I've been working on this bear for the last 4 days (after the pattern pieces had been drawn out on the fabric for about 3 months!), and I finished up the stitching last night.
This will be a pretty big bear (about 18 inches tall), and she is all hand stitched.
In keeping with the "less is more" concept for displaying our bears, I have decided that this year fewer is ok as long as they are really, REALLY well made. Hand stitching does that for me -- for one thing, I take the time to tuck in every single little tuft of fur when I pin it together, and when I'm done hand stitching the seams are so tight they are practically invisible, which means the finished product is a lot better.
Anyway, as you can see here are the parts
-- 2 legs, 2 arms, 2 ears, 1 body, 1 head --
now it will be on to the jointing and stuffing --- (and in order to stuff her I have to do "scrapping" of some bears that we have decided are not saleable and so will be torn apart to reuse the stuffing, eyes, joints and some of the fabric -- so this may take a while)
Meantime, I found in one of my many boxes of "stuff" this little basket which I want to use with this bear to fill with some of those handmade berries I did last week.
Just one problem -- its so, well, "PLASTIC"!
I'm trying to figure out if there is anything I can use one it to give it an aged, more matte finish.
Guess there will be some experimenting to do here.
Have I mentioned how much fun I'm having with my new camera?
Now I admit I resisted the idea of changing cameras (who wants to deal with the learning curve?), but after about a week of shotting pictures of just about everything that doesn't move (and a few things that do!), I'm finally getting the hang of this one.
And yesterday the Big Black Dog that lives at our house was just looking so cute, playing with 3 toys at once and well, you can see what a great picture I got of her -- this from across the room in pretty "iffy" light -- yes sir, I do like this new camera!
(I might also mention here that the cardboard box behind her in this shot is her toy box -- not that she's spoiled or anything, but that box is about 20 inches square! -- but then a lot of the toys were made by "mom", so there ya go)
Maybe its to lull between shows, or the extra time I've spent surfing around other artist websites, but I'm seriously thinking about revising our web site again. Last year I redid the bear part and basically that's all that we have on the site right now, but unless we come up with a new name, pay for another domain, do new cards, business license, etc., etc., etc., I just need to find a way to revise the site to cover all the many things I actually do. So, time needs to be spent there too.....perhaps I'll do some hand lettered blocks to make into .jpg buttons and all ... we'll see
So today its laundry, and maybe something from the "B" list: shopping, inventory of bears, taking down the Christmas trees, then back to the art
Onward!!
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