Heirloom bears made from your wedding gown

How great is it to convert your most precious memory in to a lovely keep sake bear?

would you dare?

I had the request and chance to remake the most beautiful gown I had ever seen in my life into an amazing keep sake bear with permission of free creativity, just make the bear as I want but make something special of it, the request was a normal-sized bear and a smaller bear.

Cleaning a wedding gown would be 300,00 GBP and its always the bottom of the gown that gets mucked with sand and dirt, but its the bottom lace i need to use if i want to create a similar gown back, once I start unpicking the gown I get a hot flush, not sure if it’s my age or the nervous that join in when you need to cut something so valuable in pieces, beads will be taken off where need, notes be made about the design and layers used, I only always forget to take pictures of the work in progress, think its because my mind is with the gown more as with making pictures.

Once the gown is in small pieces it’s easier to wash the skirt part in the tub to get the dirt washed away and what’s left is clean lace.

The main bear I made from the satin skirt and i won’t go into detail about how and why I do sudden things, as all my bears those bears are 5-way cotter pin jointed to make it a traditional posable teddy, firmly stuffed, embroidery nose and old English black eyes.

Then when the main bears are made it’s time to measure the bear and create a pattern for the dress. This gown had a sheer top with butterfly sleeves with the bear not have nice curves as the lady had I was pretty sure it would be useless to create the sheer top just exactly how it was this is nearly possible with a bear be smaller and not has human shapes but my goal is to get as close as possible, the dress for the bear had beautiful butterfly sleeves and sewn the sequins back on as original. The bottom part was a mega-sized train I remade the train but in easier to handle size for a teddy, The skirt is remade with the same layers the underskirt, the tulle wish gave the dress volume and 2 layers of lace fabric, the back of the top was fully buttoned from neck til lower spine so the bear had the same, amazing shiny beads around the neckline and under bust line was all sewn back and than the big Phew when the dress fits good on the bear. I made her a bloomer from the tulle with satin and a long veil I connected with a handmade flower and gemstones and then you get a bear like this ….