Product Description

Expert Australian teddy bear maker Jennifer Laing shows you her techniques for sewing the world's most huggable bears! This brand new book is the long awaited sequel to Jennifer's The Art of Making Teddy Bears. 96 pages.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #587703 in Books
• Published on: 1998-07-01
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 96 pages

About the Author
Always a closet bear-lover, Jennifer Laing still has her childhood Steiff and Hermann bears. Her personal collection is small but cherished, a few old Steiff bears and some examples from her favorite international bear artists.

After gaining a B.A. in Science and studying art for two years, Jennifer was a freelance commercial artist and then held a variety of other jobs including aerobics instructor, personal trainer and ski instructor! In 1990 she managed Australia's largest teddy bear shop where she first began making bears; sewing standing up behind the counter in quiet moments.

Jennifer was the first Australian bear artist to work solely in mohair. She hand-stitches all her bears and works alone, only making 70-100 bears a year. She has won many international awards, and is Australia's best known bear artist. Jennifer is active in charity fund-raising, using her bears to help raise money for animal and wildlife conservation groups, such as Liberty and The Sea Shepherd Society.

Jennifer's designs are constantly changing and she generally only makes editions of five or ten. The largest editions she has done are of 25, and they have been for the Walt Disney World Doll and Teddy Bear Conventions (1994, 1995, and 1997). She was also invited back to Disney World for 1996 and 1998, but had to decline due to the size of her waiting list. She cannot take wholesale orders as she has over three years of personal orders on her waiting list.

Jennifer teaches all levels of bear making and her workshops are keenly attended around the world. She is currently working on her fourth bear book.

Customer Reviews

Excellent
As a professional teddy bear artist who has sold internationally, I must say I owe a lot of my education to this book. While I have read just about every teddy bear making book out there (once you get started, it's addictive), I never found another quite as good as Teddy Bear Art. In this guide, Jenniger Laing addresses the true spirit of making artist teddy bears -- designing your own patterns. You can never be a complete artist until you can do this, and Laing will give you a good push in the right direction. She discusses each aspect of each pattern piece individually, shows you how to make changes in your finished product by altering the pattern, and finally tells you how to put all the pieces you've created together to make sure they'll fit -- before cutting your valuable mohair. She also addresses series of bears and ideas of names, collections of materials, and more. Again, this is the best book I have read on creating your own patterns from scratch and truly becoming a teddy bear artist.

However, if you are simply seeking already made patterns for bears to make, this is not the book for you. There are only three patterns in this book and they are not the primary goal of this book.

For those who want to learn how a teddy bear is really created, I cannot recommend this book highly enough.

A stand out book
Jennifer's book is packed with a lot of useful information for beginners and experienced bear makers. This book contains information to help those who want to design their own bear patterns, as well as plenty of information for people learning how to make their first bear. A must for all bear artists.

Brilliant book
This book covers absolutely everything, from designing your own bear to putting it together and dressing it. It has patterns for a few bears and its the book you must have if you want to become a bearmaker without spending a lot of money on workshops