Daiso DIY Felt Bear Tutorial

It’s been awhile since I’ve done any craft work, so a quick visit to Daiso set me up for a few felt projects. As it turned out, Daiso has moved on from food felt DIY Kits to animal related ones (well, just an FYI).

So I got a few animal ones, so let’s start with this orange bear in cute green shorts!

Daiso Felt Bear

This kit comes with templates and all the required materials. What you’d need to get on the side is some craft glue, pins and a needle.

felt bear materials

felt bear template

Of course the most important part of this DIY pack is the set of instructions. Even though it’s in Japanese, it’s pictorial enough for you to understand without a hint of the language.

felt bear instructions

So let’s get down to it!

The first thing you’d need to do is cut out the shapes provided in the template.

felt template cut out

After which, you can cut out the felt, based on the templated shapes. Remember that you’d need to cut 2 pieces for some parts. This was not stated clearly in the pictorial set of instruction.

felt bear cut outs

Start by sewing the two pieces for the head together, leaving a slot for you to insert the wool in.

felt project wool

Next, sew the “nose” and “mouth” on the white felt and use the craft glue to stick it. Then,paste the provided stickers for the eyes and rosy cheeks. Lastly, paste the pair of ears to the back of the head. And there you have it – a ready head!

felt bear head

Next we work on his torso, followed by his cute shorts. This is the cutest part of this project because these are actual “shorts”! As in you’d need to put his legs through the leg holes kind of actual!

felt bear shorts

HOW CUTE IS THAT?? Very, very cute :)

So next, finish up with the arms (sew the pieces together to make 2 arms, and stuff with wool) and then you’d have this:

felt bear almost done

What you gotta do now is sew them all together. The torso goes to the back of the head. You can use craft glue if you want it to be more secure, but I didn’t. I just made a few extra stitches to hold it together. Same goes with the arms. I improvised a little with the left arm, lol.

So here’s the finished product:

completed felt bear

Hope you’ve enjoyed this mini tutorial, and have fun with your very own felt bear!

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an imperfect felt bear

felt bear

With all the mini felt food projects I’ve been doing, I was itching to try something else.

So I attempted to make a bear. This may sound like just another project if I am a seasoned seamstress. But I’m not. Fact is, I have never sewn a bear in my life and it is precisely because of that, that I did it. I love figuring things out when I have absolutely no idea on how to do them.

I got the template from Martha Stewart’s website (I know, how domesticated is that? but her craft ideas are hard to resist). It was originally supposed to be a bear with a pocket for children to put their baby teeth (so that the tooth fairy can take the teeth and replace them with money).

tooth-bearimage taken from marthastewart.com

And on the pocket was supposed to be a name and an outline of a tooth.

But of course I modified it. I don’t need a tooth bear.

So I started working on it after some crazy shopping for felt and other bits and pieces at Daiso.

felt-bear-cut-out

First I had to cut out the outline of the bear template. My first time cutting out my own felt pieces (previously it was all pre-cut for me, all in one package, remember?)

It felt and looked like some sick acupuncture session for the paper bear, but nevermind. So I then cut the second piece. I decided to make it’s back polka dotted mainly because I was in love with the polka dotted pink and white felt I found at Daiso.

felt-on-felt

(the polka dotted felt is white on its reverse side)

The most challenging part for this project, in my opinion is the fake “pocket”. Because I had entirely no idea on how to 1) make the bear’s nose and mouth and 2) to sew letters.

And the fact that I chose to make an embroidered heart with the letters LOVE on it was complicated enough, but somehow I managed to figure it out.

felt bear close up

The eyes were basically french knots (which I have by the way perfected, based on an unfinished food project involving strawberries) -> simple enough. The nose was done with satin stitches -> which I had to research through Google and Youtube on how to make it. Mouth was just an extension of the nose.

So. For the fake “pocket”, I decided to do a heart. So I drew a heart on the felt with a pencil, and sewed running stitches for the outline, and applied the newly learned satin stitch to fill up the heart outline. Heh heh, talk about being a fast learner. I guess the heart turned out decent enough.

For the words, it was a scribble and then I just stitched my way thru.

polka dotted felt bear

So then it was time to sew the two pieces of felt together. In the intructions, it says to use a whip stitch. I had no idea what that is and so did some research, again on Google and Youtube. Tried to follow but everything got tangled up. Gave up, took a shower and finally realised that it is something similar to overcast stitches.

Did a research on whether overcast stitches is the same as whip stitches. And voila! Whip stitches are actually overcast stitches but it it only called whip stitches when sewing 2 or more layers of cloth together.

Pissing off and time wasting. Not that I knew that it was practically overcast stitches, I was back on the ball and happily stitched up the border of the bear.

Confession: I stuffed my bear with white knitting yarn. Because Daiso ran out of cotton stuffing. So I improvised. Nobody can tell the difference anyway. And I love the rainbow bow that I added as a touch up. Nice touch! (If I may say so myself) :)

It may not be the tidiest piece of work ever, it may have imperfect stitches but to me, this bear is an accomplishment on its own. After I was done with it, I could hardly believe that I had actually made a stuffed bear from scratch. It was such a rewarding feeling.

Next thing to try out would be knitting! But that would be another story altogether.

felt-bear-at-work bear with cacti

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