An old mohair coat

I've had this old wool and mohair coat hanging in my closet for the last 6-7yrs or so. I can't remember where I got it from, possibly a local second hand store, but I do remember that I had intended originally to make bears out of it.

But I got distracted with life and other projects and totally forgot about my original intentions.

Until last week.

I pulled it down, whipped out some of my patterns and got to work disassembling it. The coat was in such good condition this actually proved to be quite a tricky task! The colar was a strip of real-fur (fur on leather), so we decided to incorporate that into some of the bears so that it didn't go to waste as well. Every last usable piece of mohair was used, and we ended up with 7 bears cut out.

To add a bit of extra interest, I decided to mix up a couple of pots of dye in mint green, soft blue and antique rose. You can see the dyed, sewn, turned and jointed bears below. Minus their heads!

The heads weren't too far away though, and by the next day I had this cute little pile in front of me to work with.

When making batches of bears I definitely think I work better when I give myself a variety of sizes to work with. It just keeps things interesting, keeps me thinking (so I don't slip into automatic mode) and keeps the bears fresh.

As the little faces started to emerge I was getting quite excited!

The next step after the heads had been completed and attached to the bodies was to stuff all 7 bears, and close all 35 stuffing hole seams! This is always the most tedius part! But by that stage you're SO CLOSE to the end, the motivation is high (though the energy is often low!).

A few more hours spend finishing up the shading detail and choosing accessories, and the group of mohair-coat bears were ready for their photo shoot!

I am actually REALLY happy with how they turned out. These are the style of bear I like to collect myself, so it will be a little tricky to say goodbye to them. The four bears above were cut using our old-style 'Jonas' pattern, the two little white bears with the fur-bellies were cut using our 'Osias' pattern and the multi-colour cutie was cut using our 'Booth' pattern. All patterns are available for purchase and instant download.

You can view all the available bears in our etsy store, but please be aware that the gorgeous 'Bean' bear (middle of the photo above) has already found his new home.