ColdhamCuddliescalling: A Week of New Starts

Sunday, 14 August 2016

A Week of New Starts

Hello there Folks - Cy Bear back again.

As the title implies it's been a week of new beginnings, even if there's not been too much other activity around on the Coldham Cuddlies front.

This week's post is therefore likely to be somewhat shorter than of late - but mainly because the call of the Olympic Games, being beamed from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil - with the constant need to switch channels to watch a particular sporting activity which catches Isobel's fancy - has proved a bit of a distraction for her! She's been doing some sewing: but not as much as usual. Thus there has been a bit of a hiccup in the "production line" that has been the norm of late.

First of all, as I told you last week, a Baby Hedgehog was scheduled to leave us for pastures new. Our customer, was given a choice of two Baby Hedgehogs currently in stock -,

and the one on the right was picked out from this photograph - which was included, if memory serves, at the end of last week's post. The Baby Hedgehog on the right was the winner - and so on Tuesday, he/she/it (your choice!) was duly wrapped up and prepared for its trip to Lindon, Utah - but not before the usual Farewell Photograph had been taken:

Baby Hedgehog duly began its journey into the unknown, but still exciting prospect of its Forever Home on Wednesday afternoon. (That means replacements need to be factored into Isobel's production programme for our new Cuddlies of the future.)

Then, in between watching the Olympics, Isobel began a new project - which involves a Baby Fox, or two (or more). She's made a Baby Bear or two recently - as can be seen here:

https://www.etsy.com/uk/listing/397964269/polar-bear-mobile-toy-animal-mobile

Here's the Baby Fox pattern she's been using - for the first time ever, even though it's been in our Toy Pattern Library since she started making Toys way back in the late 1950's at school. Her book of Animal Patterns has this one (which can be made as a Baby Lamb or Bear), so as she has got an idea for another Baby Mobile, she thought she'd start with this chap(ess):

As you can see, the ears are still to be properly attached - but the "look" is encouraging! Although the pattern does not call for it, Isobel decided to give this Baby Fox arms that moved - because in the original pattern photo, they looked a little "forced"- for want of a better description. In the picture, the arms were sticking out and just did not look right! Allowing them to move seems a better option - but now we've got to source some more discs, as we've only got enough for 3 more (Isobel's has plans for more Cuddlies of this size - which are somewhere between our Baby Rabbit patterns and the one for our Baby Koalas).

These Foxes will be a little larger when finished than are the Rabbits and Piglets we've made recently, and may actually not look right if we attach them to a circular Baby Mobile frame. That we won't know until more made, and experiments with ribbon sizes etc are done. We think the final Little Foxes will be just a little smaller than our current Baby Koalas - shown here.