Page 17: Teddy Bear Tie

Items Needed: Brown and Pink felt for the bear, Googly eyes, 3 fun little buttons, about 18" of ribbon for the tie

Teaches: Tie a bow or knot, ABC letters/primary colors if you have ABC buttons in red blue and red.

Cut out the following pieces: Cut a large "teddy-bear-shape" out of your brown felt (see suggestions on measurement below in directions), cut out little pink pieces for the ears, nose, hands and feet. Cut your ribbon in half so each half is around 9" long.

Directions: This page is fairly easy to make. I patterned this page after a teddy bear page in my mom's quiet book. I kind of just "eyed" her page and cut a bear shape that was a similar size (and could fit on my page nicely) out of my brown felt. If you need help "eyeing", my bear shape (from bottom of feet to top of ears) is about 9" tall, and from side to side (arm to arm) about 6.5" wide.

Also, here's a sketch mom made way back in the 70's, while making her quiet book. It might be helpful to enlarge the sketch picture and print it off and use it as a template when cutting your pieces out:Sew your little pink ear pieces onto the brown felt where you want them. Do the same with the little pink feet and hand pieces, just sewing them 1/8" away from the edge. Then take your little round pink nose circle and before applying it to the brown felt, you are going to want to sew a nose and mouth design on it. I did a sloppy job on mine with a black zig-zag stitch for the mouth and then just a back and forth (a thousand times) switch for the nose. You could also do an embroidery job here to make it look cuter. Then position the circle on the bear's face (you might want to also place the eyes in place so that you put the mouth/nose piece in the right spot and give the eyes enough room). Remove the googly eyes and then sew the circle into place.

Place your googly eyes onto the brown felt. I used heavy duty/industrial strength glue to apply the plastic eyes to the felt, you could probably also use a hot glue gun too. Or you could just make fabric or button eyes. I like the googly eyes because one of the things my boys like to do when playing with this page is tilt the bear from side to side and make his eyes shift.

Sew little buttons into place onto your bear's chest. I found some cute "ABC" buttons at Joann's, and I thought they could be helpful with teaching letters/colors on this page as well. Once your buttons are in place, take your ribbon and fold each strand over around the edge of the neck so it looks like it is coming from behind the bear's neck. Sew each strand into place. Fold over and sew the loose end of each ribbon so the ends won't fray.

Now all you've got to do is sew your teddy bear into place on the page. My bear took up almost all of my page (leaving 5/8" on the top and 5/8" on the bottom for when I sew the pages together). I also added a little text bubble with some white pellon and a blue permanent marker that says "Please help me tie my bow!"

Here's a picture of the teddy bear in my mom's quiet book. She used shoelaces instead of ribbon for the bow: