Teddy Bear Hot Pad

I mentioned in the Barbie Fashion Doll Thrills post that I'd picked up a bunch of old crochet magazine patterns that were on sale at a vintage pattern site. One of the upsides of buying the whole magazine is occasionally I'm surprised by a project I hadn't noticed when I selected the magazine. In this case it was a Teddy Bear Potholder or in my case Hot Pad as I find these work great to set things on, not so great to try to pick things up with when they are hot.

This is a Michelle Wilcox pattern found in Annie's Quick and Easy Pattern Club April-May 1991 magazine. I used cotton dishcloth yarn for my project and followed the suggested hook sizes. I prefer cotton when I'm going to use heat on my projects. The downside to this is dishcloth cotton has more limited color selections. I would have preferred a lighter color as shown in the magazine for the baby bear. However, finding any brown locally has been challenging over the years. SO I used what I had on hand.

I used sport cotton for the eyes and Baby Bear's paw pads. I tried his paw pads with the pink dish cloth yarn and it was too heavy.

This will make for a nice summer hot pad. I have a few I can use for Memorial Day and July 4th but it is nice to have some summer fun themed ones as well.

Red Riding Hood Set

This was actually the last set I made but I do have one more to write about that I'll mention next week. I almost didn't make this set. I had another set I'd had my eye on since I landed on the idea of doing the Red Riding Hood theme. However, time was starting to be an issue.

To complete the other set Red Riding Hood had rather long legs with red and white striped stocking which meant lots of color changes and weaving in ends just for her legs. While the effect was cool the time was an issue. It also lacked a Grandma.

As I was flipping through my pattern books I stumbled across a free Red Riding Hood pattern I'd printed ages ago from Red Heart that was a complete set that had Grandma, the wolf and Red herself. While adding a character the time needed for each was significantly less. Problem solved this was my pattern for the final Red Riding Hood project.

This is a Michelle Wilcox pattern and you can find the free pattern here.

For those of you used to round ami construction starting at the top of the head and working down these are a little different. These work from the front of the face to the back. The legs are formed as one piece and divided through sewing yarn to make an indentation. I liked the change, especially the way it allowed for Red's hair. It made adding eyes easier as well. If you don't like the leg formation it would be easy enough to adapt to a more traditional ami style. I rather liked it.