Brenda,

I've never sewn that angle shaped gusset before, however, just thinking about the mechanics of it, handling the material in hand, it seems easier to do it backwards from the way we are taught...that is not to sew the side pieces together first as is the norm...but instead to sew them to the gusset first and then stitch the center chin piece down from the center point last. 

It looks from her corner slash marks in the pattern that that is the intent.  Good question. 

Pat

Hi!

Thanks so much - the reason I ask is:

(a) the pattern instructions are in German only

and

(b) if I start with the gusset and sew each head side piece on to it, then part of the depth of the muzzle (the chin) will be eaten up by the seam allowance for the triangular nose tip. Can't tell/not sure if the pattern has compensated for that, from the look of the pattern. I've even cut this all out on plain cotton to try it out but am stumped on this one thing!

I appreciate your patience - I know I didn't word it very well

SO - do the little slasshes at the corner of the pattern indicate that is the place to start sewing first?  Gosh!  Is there a list of sewing pattern symbols (like editorial symbols for mark-up)?  That would be great! 

Believe it or not, I can actually sew, just can't really read a pattern to save my life!!

Cheers and thanks

Brenda

I sell my own patterns and I used to do a squared off gusset muzzle- I found that people were so used to rounded gusset snouts that they were puzzled, just like you.
 
    On my patterns at least, you just sew it up the way you would sew a bear with a curved nose gusset- it's just straight instead of curved, that's all. This pattern doesn't look like you need to do much different to usual, in my opinion

  The 'slashes' I think are just places to match your pieces together- the 'slash' on the head side at the snout matches with the centre of the gusset 'slash'. I would just mark them, dont actually slash the fabric as that would make the seam a bit prone to fraying I think.

  Good luck with your bear, I am sure he will turn out wonderfully:)

One tip is that you hand sew the nose area so that you can get the lines streight. It looks like an interesting pattern. Post pictures so we can see what your bear looks like.

Lovenshire has just made me put 2+2 together and I think I may have your answer with the angles.
This is a technique Ted Menten uses in his book. You use angles on the nose points to make it easy to line up and sew the gusset. So you can pin the angles BUT then as Lovenshire says don't actually stitch to the angles, curve it round to give you the rounded nose of a more generic pattern.
Hope that makes some sense.

I would do as everyone else seems to say sew the profile pieces as normal (nose to neck), then line up the gusset as above. Stitch gusset in to place and wallah! One heard.

Richard
x

Last edited by Rich1988 (Feb 11, 2010 09:16:03 AM)

Richard, you are exactly right...that is what it said to do.  I don't know if it would help me or not but I don't intend to do that pattern anyway.  I get a pattern and look at it and think boy, if this were this way and that were that way and this was changed to this...oh well, I might as well make my own pattern!

Dawn Marie wrote:

Has anyone ever tried making a polymer clay face Bear

Welcome to TT, Dawn Marie!

I know that Jo Nevill (Jo Bears) makes bears with sculpted porcelain faces: http://www.bearpile.com/detail.cgi?id=1 … tem=38275, and she's a member here on TT.

Becky