Mending an Antique Teddy Bear 1

It is one thing to make a teddy bear of your own, but another, completely different one to try to save an antique teddy that is already falling apart...

Teddy (1940) before mending

Some time ago an elderly lady who was born during WWII in Berlin showed me her teddy she got for her birth. As you can see on the pictures, the poor creature had almost no fur left - as a baby the owner tore out the teddy's hair during a bombing, and the years to follow had worked him over as well. She asked me if I could mend it. I wasn't sure about it at all, as I had never done anything similar before, and to be honest, I was afraid of this task. She didn't want me to undo everything and put it together again after cleaning and re-stuffing, but only to restore more or less the face and other damaged parts without changing the whole expression. The project seemed to be even more challenging as have been done already several mendings with patches of different fabrics.

I spent many hours looking at the teddy, thinking about what could be done, I went through all my supplies to find the right material, and finally made a start. I was sooo nervous!
Looking at the pictures still surprises me that I agreed to take this challenge, as I'm a completely self-taught bear maker, and my research about antique teddies didn't give me any ideas how to do it. So I had to find out myself, and by posting it I hope it will help someone else in a similar situation. (I made this work "some" time ago, before I became a mother, as back then I had long nails - it seems like ages ago... *lol)

Damaged armpit with joint

There were huge holes under the armpits from where the stuffing had already vanished, caused by the rubbing of the joints. Another big hole was on the belly.

First I had to find wood wool to re-stuff the arms. To mend the bigger damages I took a piece of Schulte mohair. The back of the fabric had more or less the right colour, the same as the teddy, even though the original fur was that typical brass-yellow many teddies used to have back then. But as I only needed the shaved fabric, wrong side up, the pile was not important. Of course it was not exactly the same colour, as the teddy also had a kind of patina.

With patches of this fabric I covered the major holes. First I basted the patches, the same way as an applique, on the hole before fixing them with an invisible ladder stitch. As it was very difficult to work under the armpit, especially working around the joints, I had to find another solution for the minor damages. With very thin yarn I somehow managed to reconstruct the woven original fabric by "weaving" to and fro many times with yarn and needle until it looked well. I did the same technique on other parts of the teddy.

The two different mending-techniques