Early German style

This is a new Teddy in the style of earlier 20th C German bears, with some of the characteristics of a Steiff bear of around 1904.

He has a marked hump, (which style began to disappear around 1914), with long slim curved arms. His nose is worked in satin stitch onto a thin tapering muzzle, and his rounded ears are set vertically across the gusset seams in his head. Instead of wooden boot-button eyes he has glass eyes, set rather close together.

He is taken from the pattern in Make Your Own Classic Bears by Julia Jones [Page 42 Early German Bear]. More detail below.

Learning from my experience with my first bear, and having read more construction information about bears, (so now I know what a crown joint is), the quality of this bear is slightly better. As I put him together, I made the joints so stiff that they barely moved; thus when he was fully stuffed with straw they were quite as they should be.
I increased the size of the pattern for the bear - in the book he is 14.5 inches tall and my bear turned out about 16 inches. The reason I did this was because I had bought a rather nice piece (fat quarter metre) of mohair and I wanted to use it all. I have noticed that my bear does not seem quite the same overall shape as the one in the book and I wonder if the photocopying distorted the shape - the muzzle seems narrower. Also I used green glass eyes (from Christie Bears) rather than amber, as I thought they went rather fetchingly with his fur. The mohair, purchased from Oakley Fabrics, is a rich brown colour with darker tips and a distressed curly texture to which overall effect the photo cannot do justice.
His mouth and nose are embroidered in black DMC perle embroidery thread. The paw pads are a chocolate brown suedette, also from Christie Bears. He has a thoroughly lovable look, as do all bears, in a way that the dolls do not. His new people have called him Heisenburg (because he looks uncertain).