glovey ted

[brokenblossom.livejournal.com]

Hahahah sometimes I amuse myself.




:-D

I'm useless w/ scarves and gloves, and go through several most winters. I lost half of three pairs over the winter (one on the day I'd bought the things) which started to get really bloody irritating. But I hate throwing things out (I have a "it could come in useful one day!" mentality) and so when I realised the other day that I'd lost the right hand glove of the latest pair (nice squishy chenilley type ones from H&M, the colour's a bit off here, they were a sort of winey pink colour) I looked at it for a while wondering what, if anything, I could do w/ it. The cuddliness of it, and the arrangement of the fingers, made me think... TEDDY BEAR!

So, here's how I did it (Blue Peter style):

Step 1: Find a glove you love

Step 2: She falls in love with... erm, sorry. Chop off little finger, as it's in completely the wrong place, but *don't throw away!* Show yr idea to yr sister, who will say, "Hahah you can make a teddy bear w/ a cock!" You argue, and invert the middle finger to demonstrate how it will look. "Hahah, a teddy bear w/ a vagina!" This girl is in charge of teaching impressionable teenagers about sex. Hrrrrm... Anyway, sew up entrance to "vagina", chop it off on the inside, and retain that finger too.

Step 3: Re-attach little finger at a more appropriate place for an arm. This was the trickiest part. Had to do it inside out of course. Stitch it down onto the glove around the ring of raw edge at the base of the finger, and then cut an opening into it on the other ("good") side, so you can pull it inside out.

Step 4: Arms by now are quite mismatched in length, so after stuffing the body and limbs, fold up the longer arm, and put in a couple of stitches to make it stay in place. You now have a headless teddy bear.

Step 5: To define the neck from the body and head, loosely stitch a thread in and out around the neck area and pull it tighter, drawstring style to ruche it in. Sew down end of thread to secure. Fill the rest of the head up w/ stuffing, and then stitch the top of the head up, trying to curve down the edges to stop it from looking too squared off, Frankenstein's monster style.

Step 6. Nearly there! Find the middle finger you'd chopped off during Step 2, and cut off at about two and a half centimetres from the tip. Push in a little stuffing to pad it out a little, and you have an ear! Stitch it down onto one side of the head, making sure the fixing stitches also close up the hole, so nothing leaks out. Make another ear out of the bit of finger tube left. You'll have to stitch up one end of it, rounding off the corners, then turn it inside out to hide messy stitches. All that's left now is the face. Look in yr button box, and realise there's nothing suitable for eyes, so decide on the embroidery option. Cut out eye and nose shapes from felt, position them on the face, and sew down with a sort of satin stitch, trying to keep it neat (I used felt because stitching directly onto this fabric would mean fluffy strands of fur poking through in between and looking messy, probably wouldn't have bothered w/ the felt on a plainer fabric). Sew on a lop sided smile using a wonky chain stitch, and hoorah! You're done.

Now wasn't that fun? And worth wasting time on? Wasn't it? Hmmm...

Hoorah! Send me yr old gloves, I will people the world w/ glovey teds! Or bear the world maybe.