I was looking through teddy bear maker blogs (particularly the lovely teds on A Stuffed Life- exquisite work!) and I had in mind to try to make one again. I used to make jointed teddies twenty years ago but just got out of it and hadn't done it in that long. I mostly made full-size teddies but I did make a couple in dollhouse size, which I found in a box of old stuff that my mother had saved for me. Those old teddies have lost various appendages over the years... They look to be a half or two-thirds the size of my prototype teddy that I just made, but their construction is very clumsy... I think that my prototype is about as small as I can get with my current materials on hand...

Well I did make some patterns for the newest ted:

He didn't turn out too bad, but I already have some improvements in mind for the next iteration. Instead of leaving the stuffing hole for the limbs and the body at the end of the piece, I'll leave it along a side; I did this for the arms and they turned out much better than the legs and body, having a nice rounded section at each end instead of a stumpy section where I sewed the stuffing hole closed... This is pretty much due to the constraints of the material thickness; at some point it doesn't matter what stitching I do, the cloth will perform as it pleases...! I am hand-sewing everything because I think that if I tried to do this on a sewing machine, I would end up stitching myself to myself, undoubtedly. Also I am undecided about the head; at first I'd thought, well, for the next one I'll flatten the sides and broaden the mid-section, but I can only stuff (with cotton balls! ) the head so much, and it still remains pretty malleable as a whole, meaning that I can almost mold his head to the flatness I want at this point, and I don't know if changing the pattern will get me anywhere just because of the material thickness constraints... Hmmmm... I may tweak it a little.

The toughest part is turning the pieces to the right-side-out, after I've stitched them...! I am using a blunted toothpick to help with that. I also had some problems with the paw pad fabric unraveling after I'd stitched it; the "fur" fabric (which I wish I knew what it was, I have no idea what it's called, probably a knit of some sort) is pretty close-knit so not nearly as problematic as the linen-type fabric...

Edit: the patterns are just from my head, from my twenty-year-old-memory of what parts go into a jointed teddy; if anyone is interested in them I'm happy to draw them out a bit better but I probably will end up tweaking them here and there anyway, being prototype sketches...!

Another edit: I incorporated some of my improvements that I thought of, and here (on the right) is the new teddy. I think I'm on the right path now!