Monastery Wool Bear …

Yesterday our local guild held a gift exchange as part of our December meeting.    I took a photo of the gift I made before I wrapped it up. 

I needle felted this teddy using some of the wool I bought at Mt. Saviour Monastery on shearing day in spring.  I washed and carded the wool, but left some of the little bits of vm (vegetable matter) and random longer hairs in to give the teddy a little character.   This little guy is about 7 inches and fully jointed.    I really enjoyed working on him and am working on more for Rock/Distaff day at the guild in January.

Making these teddies has brought me full circle in a way… For many years I created bears out of coats, quilts, clothing and other fabric from my customers.  Each bear was one of a kind, very time consuming.   As I started working with fibers more and more, I worked on teddy orders less and less.  Even though I stopped doing the bears about 5 years ago, I still get calls from people wanting a custom ordered bear.  I really don’t have the time for that kind of work anymore.    Now working with the small needle felted teddy I will once again be making Eve’s Bears, the name on the tag my older bears wear.   

In the package I picked out were these, hand knit wool gloves from Marcie.  I love the green tweed yarn and they fit well.  Marcie commented that if the gloves where a little big, they could be lightly felted to shrink them down to size.. I hadn’t thought of doing that with gloves.

I’ll be posting an update on the guild blog a little later today…