Brown Bear Elmer

I love teddy bears; always have. I found "The Teddy Bear Making Book" by Brian and Donna Gibbs several years ago in a discount book store for $5, and I wasn't really sure what I was going to do with it. I just knew that I liked teddy bears, and one day I might like to sew one.

Fast forward to this spring when I bought my sewing machine, and I decided to try my hand at making my first bear. I later made a second one for my husband's birthday to go along with the quilt I made him.

This weekend I finished my third. I will call him, "Elmer." Don't know why. Just looks like an Elmer to me. Elmer will be gracing my shelf and watching over me as I sew. I had planned him as a gift, but he's just so masculine looking. Look at those shoulders. Not at all cute enough for a 3 year old.

I guess I will just have to start looking at fabric for bear #4.

Happy Birthday to My Hubby Bear!

Today is my husband's birthday, and for the last 4 months I have been working on a quilt for him. Finally I can reveal it!

The thought for the quilt was bears since that is a nickname I have for him. I found this great "Brown Bear, Brown Bear" fabric at the quilt store and started off with that as my basis for the quilt. Of course, I had to make a "bear claw" pattern for the corners so this was the first block:

After making the four corners, I started to think about the rest of the blocks and the center. I came up with a heart to encircle two bears. Then I found this amazing pattern for pine trees:
I started thinking about bears and how Ursa major and minor were some of the first constellations that I learned about. So that got me thinking about stars, and I found this very cool star pattern that was sort of easy to piece. It just took cutting up and sewing together lots of triangles. And then since I was an expert at triangles, it was no stretch to put together four pairs and make pinwheels to complete the sides. From there it was just piecing the borders, putting together the backing, and sewing everything together. It turned out to be rather large (about 106 x 106 inches) and will look nice when we get a queen sized bed as the sides will just drape over.

Whew! I'm really going to need a bigger quilting sewing machine if I am going to keep doing this.... I included a slide show of all the different parts. Enjoy!

p.s. yes, I made the stuffed bear at the top of the page as well and included it in his birthday box

A New Distraction

I haven't had a lot of time for the photo challenges over the last several weeks. Then, just a few weeks ago, I bought a sewing machine. I had wanted one for a while just because it would make hemming and fixing clothing just a little easier. This time, I had just received some new scrubs for work that needed to be altered more extensively than I could do well by hand. So I bought one.

It's a nice beginner's machine. Very simple, and it's easy to use. I imagined just making a lot of straight lines. Of course, once I got started I found I was finding more and more projects to sew. Then came the trip to the fabric store because I "needed some thread."

While there, I remembered a book I had bought that showed how to make teddy bears (which I love.) Well, then I thought I had to buy just a "little fabric" to attempt to make a bear. I bought a few inexpensive remnants and here is my first bear.That night I was looking at the beautiful quilt my friend's mother made for me when I graduated from medical school. Then I was thinking to the Amish quilts I had seen on a recent trip to Pennsylvania, and I began to wonder how hard it would be to make a quilt. I started looking at websites, looked at patterns, and thought, "I can do that!"

So now here I am, several fabric trips and book buying ventures later, with several projects in the works. Here is my growing work pile. I will post progress on various projects as I go along. I would love to hear your comments and suggestions, plus I will be adding some of the various sewing sites I have found while surfing the web for my new hobby.

Cheers!