Simple Puppy and Bear for the American Sewing Guild

I have been along time member of the American Sewing Guild. But now in my "retirement" I have started a neighborhood group and am loving it!

In less than one year we already have a group of wonderful ladies some who are expert sewers and a couple beginners. We meet once a month at my local Joann's. So, to finish up our first year we decided to do a community service project ... sewn toys that can be donated to a homeless shelter or hospital. The guild is known for giving back to their communities.

And, since a big portion of my career was designing and making prototypes for the toy industry, I thought I would design two toys specially for our group.

About a month ago six members came over to my house and we cut and sewed up a storm and made a lot of puppies and bears!!!

You can see we have a bit of finishing work to do. That is going to be the activity for our first meeting in the fall.

---

People rotated jobs but right now we have Rochelle, Therese and Gail at the cutting table.

And Gail, again, with Elissa sewing things together!

Everyone brought fabrics and ideas, like fabric for this puppy printed with dogs all over it and mixing fabrics to make a harlequin bear!

I thought I would share my patterning process for the dog today.

These community service projects need to be easy and quick to make, a great challenge for a pattern maker. I had a very nice dog pattern from a job I did almost 30 years ago. BUT ...

this dog had 8 pattern pieces which ended up with 17 cut pieces. Too complicated!

​So, I was able to reduce it to 3 pattern pieces which resulted in 8 cut pieces.

I rounded the bottom of the legs instead of having a separate oval sole piece. Those are tedious to sew, anyway. I made the tail and the head part of the upper body pattern.  The original head had a separate panel that started at the neck when over the top of the head to the nose. I melded this with the head/body pattern. And I combined the under jaw and lower body pattern, eliminating one more piece.

BUT, as with working on a garment pattern, you just don't know what something is going to look like until you sew it up.

Since I have FOREVER been trying to make myself a pair of pants that actually fit ... I happened to have an old pants muslin to cut up ... haha ... I reuse my muslin fabric as many times as possible.

Well, it IS a puppy, but the legs were too long. The forehead was too big, the nose was badly shaped and I felt the head was a bit large for the body.

​But a good start!

I transferred all those pinned places from my first sample onto the paper pattern. The second sample I made in a brushed tricot, a fabric more like what the actual toys will be made of.

I was able to make the bear pattern without any darts. But, since the puppy has these long floppy ears, a dart was needed to sew them into. And this dart gives a better shape to the top of the head.

All sewn up and ready to stuff. 

Much better, but the forehead and jaw line need a little taken off.

Better. Now there is more definition to the head and snout.

Even though this is a brushed tricot, it is very stiff. You can see lots of wrinkles. We ended up using polar fleece for most of the toys. It is VERY stretchy which makes for a nice rounded puppy. Every fabric behaves differently. Even the finished size of each toy is different depending on how much give the fabric has. But! they are all cute. 

I am wondering if people would be interested in this or the bear pattern? It would be fairly simple to trace onto computer paper and turn into a PDF. What do you think? $5 each????

​Is this good idea??