Pink Crochet Bear for Breast Cancer Patient

The weekend just gone was a wonderful one, I finally finished my crochet teddy bear. It certainly took longer than I had hoped but just looking at the end result, I'm very glad I didn't give up. There is a lot of heart and meaning with this teddy bear and it all started with a friend who received some terrible news.
The first thing you want to do when someone gets bad news is hug them, but what do you do when you can't be there all the time? That's when the idea of a teddy bear struck me. I'd not long learned how to crochet African Flowers and saw how people had made them into all kinds of things, blankets, jackets and various soft toys.

 I found out how to make a teddy bear and went from there, searching through my lovely stash of wool (doesn't everyone have their own stash?) and picked out some nice shades of pinks that would go well, and a white to outline them, then I was off and making African Flowers any chance I got, which, when you work full time is not much of a chance.
Pinks were chosen for two reasons, the first being my friend's favourite colour is pink, and second is what she is fighting, breast cancer.
So now even though I can't be there all the time to give her a hug, there is a teddy she can hug whenever she needs.

Teddy Bear Gift

A midst all the latest hard work of updating and keeping the website running, I do find time to be a little crafty and creative myself. Lately it has involved crochet, which I find a little easier than knitting, mostly because I can put the work down somewhere and not have to worry about which stitch or row I was up to.

This is the lovely crochet bear I am currently working on, it has been growing far more slowly than I had hoped, it was intended as a birthday gift for a very good friend, but their birthday has passed now so I hope to get it finished asap as this friend has terminal cancer and I thought it would be a lovely teddy to snuggle with, cuddle or just hold on days when she is in hospital or at home.

I've just about got one arm finished, hoping to get the other arm and both legs done soon *fingers crossed* there has just been so much to do elsewhere that it has gobbled up my time. Now that things are running more smoothly again I will be back into it and hope to have this arm completed this weekend, and a limb completed each week after if I can :-)

Stay tuned for more updates :-)

Crochet Teddy Bear

Has anyone noticed just how cute some teddy bears are out there? The handmade ones look fantastic and that has been one of our latest DIY projects, to crochet a teddy bear. We didn't want to post a blog on it yet until we were sure it was actually coming together and starting to look like a teddy bear. We found this gorgeous blog on bears and other wonderful looking crochet animals called Heidi Bears Creative and just had to get the pattern and start work. The possibilities are endless with these gorgeous guys and you can really make each one very unique. 

Our first attempt at making these African Flowers was by using multi-coloured wool but soon found that using that to make the whole hexi really made it hard to see the flower, so we tried using 4 different solid colours for each part of the flower and the result looks amazing. Crocheting one of these teddy bears or in fact any of these animals is really a fantastic craft project and you can get the pattern from the Heidi Bears Creative website, they have some amazing blogs you can read up on too. Some say to stitch the pieces together as you go but since we have a few projects on the go at the moment we've found it easier to make a bundle of the hexis and then stitch them together when we have enough for the head, limbs, body etc. With a bit of luck, our bear will come out looking just as good.

Lollo the African Flower bear has been one of my biggest projects lately, after the Shamwari quilt I finished early this year. Creating Lollo has been very time consuming but a lot of fun seeing the teddy bear take shape and I'm very keen to make another, though perhaps a little smaller. I am hoping that using finer wool and a smaller hook will help with this along with perhaps a shorter body and limbs.