Psycho Ed

During a rather excellent night in the local pub, the conversation was turned to my teddy bear making 'skills' and one of the guys - Pete* - wondered if I would be able to make him a bear.  You can, I assume, imagine the ribbing he got about this. Now, we had been in the pub quite a while and the company, conversation, Guinness and atmosphere were all first rate but somehow the 'theme' for the bear went from a friendly, not cuddly, 'man-bear' to a 'psycho' bear.  The ideas came fast and thick until I really didn't know whether I was coming or going and what I had really been asked for.

In the cool light of the next day, I thought about the conversation from the previous evening and began to search through my hoard of fabric for something suitable, something to trial my ideas with and a pattern to base the main body on.

The pattern was relatively simple as I had already trialled a pattern in denim.  As it was a trial I hadn't wanted to use any of my stock of teddy eyes so had picked some buttons out of my stash.  I was really pleased with the final result and had totally enjoyed working with denim (again) and the simple to follow pattern.  However choosing a suitable fabric for the real thing took ages!

I finally selected a black velvet and red toweling-ish type cloth.  I used the cover from a pillow I had used to stuff some draught excluders with as interfacing to stabilise both fabrics.  The toweling was cut for the feet soles and inner ears.  I found some 'monster' eyes I had in my stock and so I began.

I made up the head pieces first as I wanted to see what the eyes looked like.  I tried one 'normal' brown teddy eye, and a monster eye with and without a white disc.  I hated it!  Yes, it was scary but not in a good way!  The eyes were not right, the ears were too big and the colour combination didn't work either.  Back to the drawing board.

I went back to my hoard and found some grey corduroy.  Much better!

I reused some of the bits of velvet for the inner ears and foot soles and made the main body from the grey.  (The other bits have been added to my scrap box).  I resized the ears and resolved myself to the fact that the monster eyes were just too small.  Choosing a pair of brown eyes I put them to one side, then cut out the pattern pieces.  In the next half hour, the arms, legs, ears and body were sewn together.  (Apologies for not having photos - got a little ahead of myself and forgot)

I then concentrated on the head.  The nose piece is a little fiddly but my foot control has improved considerably so with a lot of pins and slow going, the head took shape.  I trialled different shapes and colours for the discs around the eyes too.  However, and I am sure you won't be too surprised to read that black looked fab, especially against the grey corduroy.  The eyes were placed, the head stuffed and ears added.  As this was to be a psycho teddy, the mouth needed to be 'special'.

Using paper and pieces of white fleece, I tried out different designs for the mouth.  Each was pinned to the head to check out how each looked and then photos taken which were then sent to my eldest daughter, Emma, for her opinion.  Finally, a design and size were agreed and then added to the head.

With all the main pieces of the bear now done, I set about putting them all together.  Using an upholstery needle, the arms and legs were fixed to the body and buttons added for the 'joints'.  I have not done this before but found the task very satisfying especially as the joints work and the arms and legs are posable.  The head was simply ladder stitched onto the body - Pyscho Ed was nearly done.

During the original conversation in the pub, Pete* had gone off the deep end completely and stated that Psycho Ed should have a dagger in his paw!  So now I needed to come up with a dagger!

I looked for an image of one I thought I could replicate, found one and then converted this image to a scrap piece of Bosal (foam fabric stabiliser). Scrap pieces of velvet and corduroy were used for the handle and blade respectively and then glued and sewn to the piece of Bosal. I used my pinking shears to give the blade the serrated effect.

I felt that Psycho Ed needed something else. Searching through my stock of bottles, I played around with some red nail varnish and scrap corduroy.  The blade became bloodied!

Again using Emma as a sounding board, we agreed that 'less was more' and that I just needed to run some varnish along the 'teeth'.  Job done.

Once the glue had dried, I hand stitched the dagger to his paw and my work was done.

I am really, really pleased with my latest project and hope that Pete* is as just as impressed. Here he is ........

I am not sure if Pete* wanted me to use his real name and as I cannot contact him at the time of updating my blog, I have changed it to spare his blushes!

See you later :)