Making the head

As promised, I am posting some pictures of how I created Romeo's head. Please note, the techniques will differ from artist to artist :)

 After sewing, the head needs to be firmly stuffed. And I mean firmly stuffed or the nose caves in (this happened to me once, poor bear is still unfinished :( )

 Here is the opening of the head at the bottom. I have stuffed it but left a little room for the joint.

 To close up the head, I use strong sailors twine. I stitch around the opening before I put the joint in.

 As you can see, the joint is in. I then pull very very firmly on the twine to close the seam (its hurts sometimes).

 After pulling on the twine, I use a sailors know where you simply tie the twine together twice and snip off the loose tails.

 After this, i position the ears using some pinms and use a measuring tape to ensure that they are in the right place. I use a long needle and a curved needle to sew the ears on using ladder stitch.

 Now here comes the tricky bit! I do an underlayer for the nose (it is a tad scruffy as you can see) and then create the mouth again using pins so I can experiment with the placement and expression.

 After creating the mouth, I spend time on the top layer of the nose, using the backing of the mohair to help create straight lines.

When the nose is complete, I use more pins to position the eyes. I then take the eye, use more whipping twine and attach the eyes using a long needle and brutal force! Only joking, just some force lol!!!With this bear, I used eye whites to create a cute but sad look and just put them on before attaching the eyes. And there you have it, Romeo's head was completed. It was then the simple case of jointing the head to the body, stuffing and closing up the back seam. He had a tidy up and his accessories were added and he was complete :)

Hope this gives you a little idea of how I create the heads. Sometimes, I leave the ears til last, I just wanted a change this time lol!

Kelly

xxx