In my spare time I like to make handmade heirloom teddy bears. You know, the kind of old fashioned, Steiff-like ones with real mohair fur that hearken back to a time before teddy bears were stamped out in a factory somewhere overseas?

Yeah, those ones.

I’ve made quite a few of them now and I’m getting pretty good at cutting out the patterns and hand stitching the pieces together.

The ones I’ve kept are scattered about the house, sitting on shelves or tucked into my curio cabinet. I haven’t learned everything I want to learn yet, but I’ve come a long way since I made my first little guy which I named Freddy:

He keeps me company while I sit at my craft table and make friends like Pip for him.

I’m still not great at noses and sometimes the eyes are a bit difficult for me to get just right. And don’t even grade me on my ability to make the cotter pin joints move perfectly. But I’m getting there and I hope someday I’ll be good enough to not need a kit at all. Someday I hope to be able to make them from scratch.

But for now I adore the ones at Teddy Tech because they allowed me to create these lovely little bears without any previous bear making experience whatsoever.

And their prices are quite reasonable considering the price of fur alone. Plus they use official Steiff-Schultz mohair fur which is great to work with.

It’s not just bears they offer, either. They have a lot of different patterns to choose from, like Hopkin Hare which I made for my daughter when she became a banker.

This year I think I’ll make their latest bunny as an Easter present to myself:

What a little cutie pie!!