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bear project all finished!

I was beginning to think I would never finish this one. In case I've not explained this one.... A friend of mine is a playwright. One of his plays has a central, non-human character. Happens to be played, usually, by a very large, blue bear that he won in a carnival type game about 30 years ago. Well... this play is going to be staged at the end of August. He was afraid the original bear wouldn't survive rehearsal and production. So we got to talking about how the bear could be copied. I figured he could find someone close to him to do the bears. Well... a project of this magnitude can't be trusted to just anyone y'know. So he drove out here from Indiana with the original bear so I could make a copy of it. We made the patterns and he took the bear home. Then I started in on the new bears.

Sounds simple right? OK. The bears are a little over 3 feet tall. They each took a 10 lb. box of polyfill to stuff. The eyes are about the size of 50 cent pieces. And the fur is the really nice, high quality, thick stuff. The nap on the main fur is about 2" long.

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was more than willing to do this since in the 20+ years we've been pals,he's never asked for a sewing favor.....I think he was saving up. lol Sharon

Reply to
mamahays
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Sharon! Those are darling, and look so much like the original it's scary. How did you manage to make the pattern without taking old bear apart? Wow!

Beverly

Reply to
BEI Design

snipped-for-privacy@cox.net wrote in news:iLRri.4098$ snipped-for-privacy@newsfe09.phx:

The things we do for theater!

The bears are great. They have a Pooh face.

Reply to
Donna

What splendid bears, Sharon! They replicate the original just perfectly. Fur with 2" nap...yikes! That couldn't have been easy to work with. *achoo*

Doreen in Alabama

Reply to
Doreen

Thank you so much!

Beary carefully! ;) Basically, I rubbed off a pattern. I got some very thin cotton fabric off the $1 table at wally world. I cut that roughly to shape and slightly larger than each piece of the bear. Then we would pin that to the seams (his seams show quite well because he's pretty worn down.) Rub the pin line with a pencil. Then I took that off, filled in any gaps in the pencil line and there was the pattern. The trickiest piece was the muzzle. On the original bear, they glued pleather of some kind over the point of the cone (the whole muzzle is a cone shape.) Then after the cone was stitched, they tuck the point in to the middle. So it folded his nose over. Well....we'd already ordered and received plastic noses. Didn't want to waste them. ;) So we had to figure that part out. All the rest of his parts were pretty easy to figure out or just straight copy.

It was a fun project, but I think I'm ready for a couple easier ones. lol

Sharon

Reply to
mamahays

Thank you very much.

And you're not kiddin' about the achoo part! lol The fur was flying everywhere. I knew I'd not done a real good job of containing it when my cat came to bed with me the other night. Perched right atop her head, jauntily even, was a tuft of blue fur. LOL Looked like her highness was sporting a new hat.

Sharon

Reply to
mamahays

Reply to
Pogonip

Oh! Those are beautifully done! Perfect! :D How did you get the cute little wrinkle on their noses?

Reply to
Kate XXXXXX

Thank you very much! :) I didn't stuff the muzzles very firmly. I left it pretty soft there so they could be smooshed around till they have whatever expression he would like on them.

I was real pleased with how the arms stick straight out too and say "hug me now please." lol

The kids are both offering to pay (from their grass cutting money) for another box of polyfill. I had to reuse the stuffing from the mock bear. They said whichever one of them can save up the money first would like to re-stuff the mock bear and keep it. LOL *Where* they plan to stash the huge thing is beyond me, but whatever.... heh heh

Sharon

Reply to
mamahays

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