The Littlest Thistle – Making My Own Travel Buddy

This post is part of the A Season by Hand series. Find the schedule here.
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a season by handKaty from The Littlest Thistle is our guest today.  When she replied that she was going to do a teddy bear for her post I was so excited!  If you’ve never seen Katy’s adorable creations, you must take a peek here, they are so darling.  Her finished bear is so cute and tiny, it is a great starter and hand project!  Katy is also currently hosting an Everything And The Kitchen Sink Sew Along, with some adorable kitchen-themed paper pieced blocks.

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Hi, I’m Katy from The Littlest Thistle.  I’m so happy that Jennie invited me to be part of A Season By Hand this summer, it was the perfect nudge I needed to dust off some sewing skills I’ve not been using much recently.  Although these days my sewing time is mostly taken up with bags, quilts and the wee Zakka items sweeping the blogosphere, my blog started out to document my teddy bear making, and it was this that I turned to for my summer project.

When I first started making bears back in 2002, I sewed them entirely by hand, as I couldn’t fathom moving such teeny wee pieces through the big clunky sewing machine I had inherited from my gran.  Making 10″-20″ bears by hand is rather time consuming, so I only made a couple a year, but eventually in 2009 circumstances forced me to investigate the sewing machine option (with a new machine!)  These days about 90% of my big bears are sewn on the machine, although there are a few bits that I need to finish by hand due to the shapes and angles of the pieces.  The mini bears though, are hand sewn all the way, so I decided to dust off a pattern I created a few years ago, and make myself my own mini travelling companion while I was away on holiday a couple of weeks ago.

Bear-Fabric

For my mini bears, I use Sassy Fabrics, woven backed, non fray, very short pile fabrics so that my bears are fuzzy, but are secure when using the tiny seam allowances needed on these wee bears.

Pattern-Transferred

With both the brown and tan fabrics being 9″ squares, you can get the sense of scale of the pattern from the picture above.  With pieces this small, it’s easy enough to create your own little travel buddy in a couple of days relaxing by the pool.

Bear

And to give you a sense of scale of his little 4″ self:

Bear-Scale

If you would like to give this a go yourself, Sassy Bears  & Fabrics supplies fabrics, patterns and kits from their US store.  Within the UK/Europe, Bear Basics can supply you with all the makings, and in Australia, check out Bear Essence.  The good news is mini bears are nice and cheap to make compared to their mohair big brothers and sisters!

Thank you for inviting me along to play Jennie, and to the rest of you, don’t forget to check out all the other amazing posts and giveaways that are part of this series 🙂

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64 Comments

    1. Thank you so much! I have actually made tinier bears, but they can push you over the edge when you try and turn the pieces through after sewing o.O

    1. To be honest, even on the big guys I still feel irrationally nervous when it comes to the ears if I’m using the machine!

  1. What a sweet little bear. I handsewed one for my hubby when we were dating……that was a LONG time ago!

    1. Hi Shauna, I don’t actually have a pattern that I’ve published for this, but the links I gave above will take you to sites that have everything from patterns to fabric 🙂

    1. Oh yes, when you use mohair for the bigger guys, at over £100/metre, you can bet that your shape fitting skills get finely tuned so that you don’t bankrupt yourself 😉

  2. Your bears are so adorable Katy!! My favorites are Peony, Sage, and Rudy. Does your cute new travel buddy have a name? Thank you!

    1. Thank you so much 🙂 My dad reckons he should be Pierre as he was born on holiday in France, but I’m not convinced…

  3. Awww he is so cute! I want to make one, I can’t believe how tiny he is for the amount of detail he has!

  4. Very cute. Is it very hard putting the needle through the fabric when hand sewing these though? I once tried hand sewing a softie made of polar fleece because I’m sewing machine challenged, and I had trouble doing the hand stitching.

    1. Ah, well the fabric for this is specially designed for mini bears. It has a non fray woven backing, which allows for the teeny seam allowances, and because it’s woven it doesn’t stretch, With polar fleece, it’s extremely stretchy and unstable, so if I have something like that, I usually apply some fusible woven interfacing to make it stable enough to work with and stuff without going all out of shape.

  5. So much cuteness in this post! I love his tiny little face and paws :D. Thanks for the links to the supplies, I might have to try one someday!

  6. I sew completely by hand, because i dont have the money to actually buy a sewing machine. It does take quite a while to sew up, but even if I use the same pattern for multiple bears, the faces always look a bit different.

  7. Katy’s bears are just incredible. Although I’m sure I could technically sew one, I could never make it look that good or have such a personality.

  8. When I first started making bears back in 2002, I sewed them entirely by hand, as I couldn’t fathom moving such teeny wee pieces through the big clunky sewing machine I had inherited from my gran. Making 10″-20″ bears by hand is rather time consuming, so I only made a couple a year, but eventually in 2009 circumstances forced me to investigate the sewing machine option (with a new machine!) These days about 90% of my big bears are sewn on the machine, although there are a few bits that I need to finish by hand due to the shapes and angles of the pieces. The mini bears though, are hand sewn all the way, so I decided to dust off a pattern I created a few years ago, and make myself my own mini travelling companion while I was away on holiday a couple of weeks ago.

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