Teddy restoration.

My father had a tradition: buying his child a teddy bear on, or perhaps very close to, the day of their birth. This is the slightly sorry, but very loved, state of my sister’s teddy after over 40 years of love. 

He suffered a little more than most as there were a few years when he was referred to as ‘Super Ted’ and took on his opponents by being swung by the legs or arms into whatever part of the body by sister could reach. Allison had been considering sending him off to a Teddy Repair Hospital, after seeing examples on a TV programme, maybe The Repair Workshop? I looked up the type pf work involved, skills needed and typical results to see if it was something that I could offer to do for her. 

My sister wanted the teddy mended, but still looking like a well-loved bear, not as new. The main issue was obviously the arms. They had been patched in the past, but there were parts with very little fabric left. New fur fabric would not have matched the pretty furless fabric left, so I opted to use felt in as close a match to the current colour as I could. To use as much of the original bear as possible, I sort of lined the arms in parts and patched, or really re-made parts of the arm where there was nothing left. New paw pads were also cut and sewn on.

Allison was hesitant about replacing the eyes, but the scratched eye was really badly scraped. It took me a while to fins some close matching eyes, I replace the worst one, but kept it in case my sister decided she didn’t like the new eye. I used more felt to re-enforce areas in the head around the eye, nose and neck. He also gained a new embroidered nose. I also added more stuffing and gave the whole bear a clean using carpet upholstery cleaner.

The original knitted jacket, made by me as a teenager, was also a little scruffy, so I designed a new cardigan for him, based on the one I had made for my nephew, my sister’s son, a few months earlier. A new ribbon finished him off. He should be ready for another, less wearing, forty years!