Back in May I was messaged by an expecting mom who asked if I could do a special custom order for her. She had an old Patagonia jacket that her now husband gave her when they were dating, but unfortunately it had a burn on one arm. She wondered if I could take the jacket and make a stuffed animal out of it; specifically a bear because they have this huge black dog named Strawberry or “Bear”. She and I found a pattern together that she liked and I had her send me a photo of the jacket to make sure the material would be one I could work with, which it was, so we had all the details squared away. I have mentioned this before but when I am doing something for the first time or still new at a project I will always explain that to my customer to make sure they are also okay with it. So I told her that I would make some test bears before I used her jacket; the last thing I would want is to ruin a keepsake she had! Let me tell you, the first few bears looked a little rough, the pattern doesn’t have seam allowances included (which she says in the tutorial) but I think that I didn’t add mine correctly. I made one for our oldest daughter out of a floral flannel that is a cute fabric but looked pretty busy for the bear. The second bear I made for our son and selected solids to work with but it was still turning out wonky.
I then stepped away from the project all together because often that helps when I am stuck in a funk with something, but also summer started with all four kids at home and I got very busy. The mom is due in late September so I knew I had plenty of time to work with. My husband had an old sweatshirt that’s been sitting in the goodwill pile for a while so I decided I’d try again using his old sweatshirt and make our twins a bear. These ones turned out much cuter, to me they still seemed a little bit off however when I sent them to the new mom she thought they were adorable! (That all goes back to my latest post on struggling with perfectionism vs creativity). I think the Lord convicted me of something in that process because I realized that I can nitpick a project to death but if I don’t start to work on it, nothing will ever get done. And I wasn’t asked to create the perfect bear for her new baby coming next month, I was asked to make a keepsake stuffy that their son can have and feel an attachment to both his parents. Yes, I wanted it to look as good as I was capable of, but again, I am not perfect. Nobody is except Jesus himself.
So I decided it was time to make her bear. I cut the fabric in a way that I could make two in case the first one did have a major mistake. They both turned out adorable! The expecting mom is very excited about the bears and it has brought me such joy knowing how much she likes them. This whole process has taught me a lot about the unrealistic expectations we can put on ourselves and that it’s not about having everything just so. It is about the gift God has given me which allows a new mom to have a keepsake bear for her newborn son.
If you’d like to order your own keepsake bear you can email me at babycloth@icloud.com or you can follow this link for the tutorial and pattern I followed to make mine!
