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Mini Felt Bears to Sew | by Guest Sarah Simi
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Quick Links: What you'll need Project steps
DIY Mini Felt Bears to sew with templates! An adorable project from Sarah Simi's book “Sew Your Own Nursery Rhyme: Wheels on the Bus.”
The wheels on the bus go round and round – all day long!
Bring an adorable family of bears to life! This “Toy Week” feature has been provided by the lovely Sarah Simi. Using the downloadable templates you can make mummy and daddy bears, as well as small bears too. This set of bears would make for a precious Christmas gift, simply follow the step-by-step instructions below.
The brown bear family are featured in Sarah's book Sew Your Own Nursery Rhyme: Wheels on the Bus. The book includes patterns for a fabulous playtime bus, with wheels that actually move “round and round”! Aboard the bus there are families of golden bears and panda bears too; the bus and its host of happy passengers provides hours of interactive, hands-on play. This book is based on the popular stop-motion animation by Little Woolly Vision.
About this special Toy Week feature
Sew Your Own Nursery Rhyme: Wheels on the Bus is brought to you by the successful team behind the multi-award winning, stop-motion animation company Little Woolly Vision. The book was created by writer and designer Sarah Simi and animator Ed Hartwell, along with Leeanne Bell, a freelance crafter who has worked with them on many of their projects.
Sarah makes lots of the puppets and sets for the Little Woolly Vision animations. She is also a knitter extraordinaire as well as a content creator, director and producer. Sarah now lives in USA. To find out more about her creative process, check out her episode of “Unpicking the Maker” with Corinne Bradd, which will be released on September 12th via the blog.
You can watch the animated version of Wheels on the Bus here.
Before You Start
- Print all of the pattern pieces for the three bears onto thin card or photocopier paper.
- Cut out all of the card/paper pattern pieces.
- The three bears will be cut from one 11¾ × 9¾in (30 × 25cm) sheet of corresponding felt. It is best to lay out the patterns for all three of the bears and pin or trace around them before you start to cut the felt. The foot pads are cut from the chocolate felt sheet.
- Carefully cut around each pattern piece with embroidery scissors – the number of pieces you need to cut from each pattern piece is stated on the patterns.
Finished sizes
- Daddy – height: 4¹⁄₈in (10.5cm)
- Mummy – height: 4in (10cm)
- Child – height: 3³⁄₈in (8.5cm)
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You will need:
Equipment
- Scissors
- Glue gun
- Heat erasable pen
- Awl – for creating the holes needed for the eyes
- Needle and thread
- The templates
Materials
- Brown bears: 11¾ × 9¾in (30 × 25cm) sheet of fox (red-brown) polyester craft felt
- Three brown bears’ bellies; all bears’ foot pads: 11¾ × 9¾in (30 × 25cm) sheet of chocolate brown polyester craft felt
- ¹⁄₈in (3mm) safety eyes (two per bear)
- All-purpose polyester sewing thread in copper, black, white, pale/pastel yellow and chocolate (dark brown)
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Project steps:
Step 1
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Step 2
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