Tag: teddy bear

Now that I have more free time (it’s a long story which I will not go into), I started knitting again. I finished up an old loop scarf and now I’m making a few teddy bear sweaters. I was never really a fan of teddy bears, but suddenly, I can’t help myself. It started with Build-a-Bear. I took out my old CamoBear when I started thinking about our move next year, and what I will do with some unloved plushies. I already started clearing out some small unwanted stuff. Anyway, back to topic, I took the teddy out, and I instantly dressed him in what clothes he had. I even checked out the German Build-a-Bear website and found some cute outfits, including the German national football team outfit. Want!

Within a week, I had bought 3 teddy bears (!!) They were from varying brands: One pre-loved purple Build-a-Bear, one white Aurora teddy and another all the way from Australia by Minkplush, called Norman. Here he is:

Norman in his sweater

I really wanted to clothe them, especially the ones from other brands. I straight away knitted a sweater following a pattern from Craftbits.com. It’s meant for a 14” bear, but I only have 13” or 16” bears. Nevertheless, the sweater still more or less fits 13″ Norman bear. I used 4.0 mm needles for the rib stitch and 4.5 mm needles for the stockinette stitch. I followed the pattern exactly, except for the neck band, where I picked up all the live stitches and did one round of stockinette, though I should not have, and then I knitted only 5 rows of rib stitch instead of 6. I used Jeny’s surprisingly stretchy bind-off. This stretchy bind-off is the best I’ve ever tried. It is a bit bulky, but the benefits outweigh that small negative point.

Knitted sweater

The pink knitted portions look quite uneven, because I unravelled the yarn from another project, and I suppose the kinks are to blame. I’m already starting the next sweater in finer yarn, so maybe someone else in my menagerie of plushies will be clothed soon.

Clothed Nici Gustav

Plush toys with clothes are all the rage right now — at least to me! This Nici Jolly Gustav is wearing a set of pyjamas with bedroom slippers from the Nici Dress Your Friends range. I’m hopeless at sewing when I need to make my own patterns. Perhaps I’ll try it one day.