As people know I sew, I thought the day might come when I'd be asked to make a memory bear. In order to be ready for this I decided to try making a bear out of quilting cotton with a free pattern. I've learned a lot but this wouldn't be a pattern I'd use again, and I'm going to take it apart and reuse the stuffing and what I can of the pieces.
Here's a link to the How Joyful Bear sewing pattern and tutorial
How to make a stuffed bear: The HowJoyful Bear
It's really lovely of Joy to provide the bear pattern for free, and I appreciate that. However my bear does have a number of problems, some from the pattern some of my own making.
Fabric:
The successful bears I've seen using this pattern all use something soft and with some volume like fleece, french terry etc, I used quilting cotton as being similar to clothing which I would use for a memory bear. As it was quite flimsy I interfaced all the pieces with iron on interfacing. (I managed to use only scraps as the pieces are not that large, so that was a real win).
The original bears used a low contrast colour combo - cream and pink or cream and pale brown. Although my quilting cottons go well together the paisley is too dark which makes the nose area in particular very visually dominant.
Size:
The pattern is for a one size only bear. Its a sitting bear about 17" tall (to top of ears). This was a lot bigger than I'd wanted to make and used a very large amount of stuffing.
Shape:
The belly sticks out rather more pointily than I think looks good, and smoother less pronounced curve would look better.
The head is a rather odd shape, very wide at the bottom and with a very pronounced muzzle, though I'm not sure what would be a good size/shape. The head also seems a bit big for the accompanying body.
Instructions:
When Joy originally shared the pattern, she described in very general terms how to put the bear together. Later she went back and wrote more detailed step by step instructions which are interwoven with the original text and pictures. This is slightly confusing to follow.
The instructions refer to numbered pattern pieces, but the print out doesn't have these numbers. I tried to match up the names of the pieces to add the numbers after I'd printed it out. This was only partially successful and I mixed up two similarly named pieces.
The pattern includes letters at various points which are used to help match the pieces up. These are generally pretty helpful. Unfortunately there are a couple of mistakes which meant I had some unpicking to do and some moments of great confusion. The front legs have the letters the wrong way round so they don't match up later on, this was fixed by unpicking and resewing. There is also a wrong letter somewhere in the shoulder area which really confused me.
Following a blog post I had read, I stitched some fabric onto the back of the muzzle area to keep the stuffing in place.
If you follow the instructions, much of the head is sewn on by hand, fine for a decorative bear but unlikely to hold up with a child. I changed it round, leaving the rear seat open and stitching the head to the body by machine. I also left one side unsewn, and then sewed up the seat.
The pattern does not include seam allowances. I added 1/4" onto the paper pattern as I'm not used to adding the seam allowances by eye. I wasn't clear when sewing the bear up which seams to sew all the way to the edge of the seam allowance and which to stop at the stitching line. Consequently I had to unpick some short sections and sadly also have some small gaps at intersections (front neck, front leg join)
I made eyes from 3 circles of felt - white, brown and black - and stitched them on by hand. I didn't embroider a nose/mouth as I wasn't sure how well the black thread would show against the navy paisley fabric. The bow covers the hole at the front neck.
Conclusion:
I won't be using this pattern again, and I shall take this bear apart to reclaim the materials used!
