Teddy — An Elegant Sufficiency

On my first birthday, my Daddy gave me my first bear. Little did he know what he was starting!

Teddy has been with me ever since, has shared both good and sad times and has always been the best listener of all. But the years have taken their toll and I knew that he needed more than a little love to keep him going.

In particular, his nose was in a really bad way. I wasn’t so sure his eyes were that secure either.

Oh dear Teddy…how could I let you get into such a sorry state?

I thought about sending him to a professional bear repairer and joined a Facebook group to read about them and what they could do. But the more I thought about it, the less I liked the idea of sending him off somewhere to a stranger, who might change his personality in the process of putting him back together. I thought of all those people who have had “treatment” and their strange faces, deciding that if anyone were to take care of Teddy, it had better be me. I gave it some thought and read as much as I could about how to go about the repair.

Teddy’s original stuffing was wood wool, known as Excelsior and someone on that very helpful FB group gave me a reliable source for it. I placed my order with Peacock Fibres in Bradford and the parcel arrived the following morning! I might have ordered a little more than I needed - both Teddy and I gasped when we saw the size of the box! My experience had taught me that generally speaking, I always need twice as much stuffing as I think…it goes nowhere, it seems, so I ordered plenty.

I’m never going to need to buy any more Excelsior though!!

Anyway, I took a deep breath and began with the easy bits. I removed the wonky stitching of his tummy seam which Mummy had done when she took out his growl, for this wasn’t Teddy’s first surgery.

I was surprised then, to find the remains of his growl still there - so maybe she replaced it? I don’t know. One thing was sure, the old wood wool was crumbling and the dust was everywhere! I was glad I had some clean replacement filling for him.

I soon had that part done and sewed up his tummy using good old ladder stitch, as recommended by NFWI Craft Judges everywhere!

I had thought of dismantling him completely and bathing him gently in cold soapy water, but the experts in the bear restoration group didn’t recommend that quite as enthusiastically as the bear ladies on the Repair Shop. As I progressed with his repair, I was glad I hadn’t taken him completely apart too, for some areas were very fragile indeed and I doubt whether he would have survived the process.

So I topped up his limbs with soft stuffing around his joints, checked that his paw pads were secure (I had repaired those when I had a pair of brown corduroy flared trousers to cut up!) and realised that the most difficult bit was still to come.

I can’t say it was an easy decision to unstitch his head. The bears I’ve made have a joint at their neck and I guess I’d imagined that Teddy would have one too. But his head was firmly stitched to his body and realising there was no way I could do anything to his face without getting inside, I took a deep breath and felt thankful that at least the original fabric around his neck was pretty secure. I had a chance of being able to sew him back together.

Here was a glimpse of his original colour and proof that yes, once upon a time he really was furry!

I was glad - relieved - that the wrong side of the mohair fabric I’d bought from Peacock Fibres was a good colour match too, because I’d learned that was the the best fabric to use to patch holes.

His nose was relatively straightforward to mend and having taken out the stuffing, I cut a few patches and began to work on securing them with a bit of stitching and darning. I also secured his eyes - wondering as I did how on earth they have stayed in place so long. There was no stitching or any fix inside at all beyond a bit of dried up glue. The safety standards of the 1950s eh?

By now, I was getting to the stage of wanting this to be done. I felt it was time Teddy was put back together and he’d lain too long on my worktop in pieces. I also realised that I was working at the limit of my ability - in fact, I began to wonder if I had bitten off more than I could chew. The problem was that the fabric of his head was so very fragile, that as soon as I put a needle through it, it fell apart and crumbled. How relieved I was that I hadn’t put it in water - I very much doubt that it would have survived.

I didn’t really like what I’d done - some parts were really badly stitched, at yet I dare not attempt to take it out, because the whole fabric would fall to pieces. I thought of making a completely new head, but dismissed that idea as too drastic. But I did make a copy, turn it inside out and use it to line Teddy’s original “skin”, doing my best to find places where I could stitch it in place without the fast-disintegrating fabric breaking up completely. But there were large areas where there simply wasn’t anything strong enough to stitch into.

I might have cried at this stage and if my Teddy had been in a fit state, he would have been put to work!

My Hero, another avid watcher of the Repair Shop, made an accurate observation: “The fabric needs stabilising” - we both knew the vocabulary, if not the techniques!

My next step was to stabilise it, then…with tiny pieces of Bondaweb between the outer head and the replacement “lining” head that I’d made. I used my tiny Clover iron on the lowest setting and gently teased what bits of fabric I could into place.

If only I had some lightweight chiffon or something that I could use on the surface to hold it all together?

I began looking through my stash of materials and found some light brown organza…and some coloured wool roving. Not the right colour roving, but maybe I could blend it to somewhere near?

Ooooer! At this point, I might have envisioned Teddy with a ginger toupee!!

But I persevered and eventually made a few small, fine pieces - with no orange fibres but including a few yellow ones which echoed his original colour, that I hoped could be stitched to the most fragile areas with a few tiny stitches. Later, it could felted into place using the finest single felting needle in my collection.

I was so relieved to feel able to restuff his head, to give him his nose and smile back and to reunite head and body. His ears are still fragile, but I was not ready to work on them and decided to leave them for a later date.

As he sat for his portrait, I noticed that his ears and forehead are still a bit fluffy, but that can be sorted out later. For now, he has a smile on his face and is in far better shape than he’s been in years.

He’s happy to be back in our music room with his mate Tubby, who joined the family when I was ten, supposedly to relieve Teddy of his duties “because he’s getting a bit fragile”. Both of them are wearing clothes knitted by my Mum in colours to match the bears on the wallpaper of Edward’s first bedroom. I thought about replacing them with something smarter, but you know, that just seemed a step too far.