A Flossie Bear is like a warm cake
Ladies and gentlemen please be seated, for Flossie Bear is about to make her debut:
Flossie Bear doesn't take to her challenges laying down. Or rather, she does.
Standing at roughly 40cm tall and as cuddly as a cloud, Flossie is complete. I actually finished the project on Wednesday, with only her little face left to embroider yesterday evening. I chose to embroider her features rather than use intarsia as I thought I might get a neater finish that way, my intarsia work leaving something to be desired… Also this allowed me to play around with the spacing and placement of the features before committing her to a face she was going to have to live with and which I was going to have to look at.
A friendly face and full o' fluff!
The most significant deviation from the cuddling bear Flossie was intended as, though, is that she was created with a buttoned envelope style opening in the back, to allow a hot water bottle to be used inside. As local temperatures dropped to around -19ºc last night, she needs some inner warmth to keep from freezing, and to warm up this Eskimimi’s town-centre igloo.
ribbed button bands either side of the envelope opening
If you were to peek inside the envelope opening, you wouldn’t find the stark rubberiness of a hot water bottle, though. No, this Flossie comes with extra comfort – she comes with extra cuddleability. This Flossie, you see, has more than one level of cosiness. Inside her fair-isle knitted exterior she has a plush lining made with a soft fleece baby blanket, hand-sewn into a double-layered covering, which is stuffed lightly with a fine layer of polyfill.
Showing the cushioned, insulating liner. If Flossie could blush, she'd be doing so now.
I got the idea of using polyfill from my favourite store-bought hot water bottle cosy, which in the shape of bagpuss. He (Bagpuss) is similarly stuffed, and the insulating properties of the materials used help to stop the very hot bottle from causing discomfort, giving a beautifully warm heat rather than an exceptionally hot one. As my other half described it when he gave Flossie a test cuddle ‘it’s like warm cake.’ The padded inner layers also helps keep Flossie at the perfect temperature for a lot longer, as the insulation helps to control the release of heat. Of course, Flossie’s padded interior also makes her extremely squishy, and being squishy is her other main function.
I’m extremely happy with this project. As Flossie was made from acrylic scraps and polyfill leftover from other projects, and uses a hot water bottle and buttons I already owned, the only expenditure on this project was for the fleece baby blanket which I picked up for 2 for £1 at the local pound shop, so she came in at a bargainous price and used up some of the acrylic scraps I have been saving for such a rainy (or, more accurately snowy) day.
