Progress Report: Christmas Teddy Bear, Start to Finish

Remember my Christmas Gift Fiasco last year? Remember the pieces I talked about on the Beary Kissmas Progress Report? Now look at the calendar and realize with some growing panic that Christmas 2014 is a month and a half away.

Oh wait, no, I should be the one doing that.

All joking aside, here I am almost a year later with a Progress Report on one of the only two Christmas presents I finished in time to give as gifts last year. One was the Beary Kissmas, mentioned above – that was a gift to my boyfriend (and technically myself) to hang on our baby Christmas tree – and the other is the subject of this article!

For my nephew’s first Christmas I bought a little lion plushie with a bib and stitched his first and last initial on it – which happens to both be ‘M’. You can read all about it and see the pictures on the Friday Finishes I wrote on it last year:

Friday Finishes #17: Stuffed Lion

So, for Christmas 2013, I had the genius idea of doing it again! He was a little older now and he loved the lion I gave him. I found a bear version of the plushie somewhere (Joann’s, Hobby Lobby, Michael’s, and my local Wal-Mart all carry different ones and at this point I couldn’t tell you which ones I got from where, as I have several of the plushies now) and set about stitching on it.

This time, I wanted to go for something different. I had three plushies at that point and they all come with a handful of charts you can stitch onto the bib: an ice cream cone, a boat, those kinds of things. I went through and picked one out I thought he would like: it was an airplane on a cloud. There was enough room in the cloud for some back stitch, so I pulled out a pen and very roughly sketched out his nickname. It fit! I was excited and got straight to work.

The stitching went extremely fast – probably faster than the last one – so I didn’t take many pictures. It took me maybe two hours to finish, at most!

Here it is halfway done:

A picture of the full bear. I took a close-up of the stitching but it came out all blurry so this is a better view of it.

A picture of the full bear. I took a close-up of the stitching but it came out all blurry so this is a better view of it.

And then here it is all finished: cloud, backstitch, and added nickname and all!

I was very pleased with myself for how well it turned out!

I was very pleased with myself for how well it turned out!

I know I’m pretty much a year late, but there should be a Friday Finishes on this coming out this month, where you’ll get all the technical details on it.

As for whether or not I’m going to do this a third year in a row? Not planning on it! He loves playing with them but I think two is enough. I think I’ll just go to the store for something this year!

————————————————————————————–

Progress Report is an update on all my stitching habits, from the kits to the stitching to the finishing process and more! Right now I am featuring one of my cat-themed projects and several of the mini kits I’m currently working on, along with other pieces I like to pull out and work on at random.

By the way – to keep up on Little Thread Crafts stitching news and get pictures, updates, and more that don’t appear on the blog until much later, follow me on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram! I would greatly appreciate it!