I Saved the Best for Last

Open/Sleepy Eyes

I have gone back and forth with this one.  Seems to be a secret that is not really discussed. I would like to thank Linda Benson for her blog post earlier this year, she explained enough for a light to go off in my head. Between that post and the little bear that was destined for the trash can I finally figured it out, almost.  I can still not get the eyes all the way shut. So these are not open/shut eyes, but open/sleepy eyes. 

This is not an easy technique,certainly not for the beginning bear maker, it is fiddly. Do not try it on a good bear to sell. 

And again, I say this is my way, I have no idea how others do it.  

I have glued a very thin piece of wire (I think this is 28 gauge beading wire) to the very edge of thin ultrasuede light. I ordered ultrasuede light off of an etsy seller,it is very thin, and strong. (She does not have plain colors in her shop photos, I contacted her directly.) I have tried it without wire, but the wire helps to push it up and stay in a rounded shape.

I did very minimal needle sculpting around the eyes, only a back and forth across the bridge of the nose. The eyes are not pulled into the head. The eyelid sewing will do this. I did use a drop of glue under the eye to hold them in place. I have found that without it when you pull the eyelid up the eye will move downward. I did not want that I want them to stay put. The drop of glue went under the bottom part of the eye.

I want you to see a picture of bear eyes, I always look at placement of lids. Where exactly it is that the corners of the eyes are.

This is just a scrap piece of fabric I am using to make a lid template. It is a little bigger than I need it to be. I used this to cut two eyelids out of my prepared suede.

Then I used a little of the Fabric-Tac glue to hold it in place. You can see the folded edge with the wire at the bottom of the eyelid.

Please ignore the stitches there, they are from the sculpting I did between the nose bridge. The camera is so close you see everything. 


I am taking a stitch through each corner of the eye. I am starting from the back of the head and coming up. I will then grab the suede and take it back down and through to the back of the head.  I am using a very long needle.

These next picture shows that I am putting my needle back into the exact same hole that the thread is coming out of. This way there will be no dimpling of the fabric in the back of the head.

Now I am at the other corner, both corners done first. Up close to the eye and then grab the suede and pull it back down to the back of the head.

On the next bear I did I marked the corners of both eyes with pen. It made it easier making them both even.

Grabbing the fabric from underneath.

Now what I did for the rest of the lid was to come up from the back of the head, and take a stitch on the suede and then go back down close to the eye again to the back of the head. I did this all the way across. It sunk the eye down and made a socket for the lid to fold into.

Again this is a very close shot. The finished lid. For myself I used a little wool and ran it along the seam and felted it in and you could not see any stitches. If I was not felting I would probably take a few more stitches to make it perfectly smooth. But again this is very close on a little bear, so really you can barely see the bumps
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I also felted a brow, but I think that if you didn't cut away the fur so much as me this would be unnecessary.
I did not make a bottom lid. I needle felted one in, but one could be done the same way and then the eyes would close completely. I am only going sleepy.

I have since I wrote this put on a bottom lid.  I did it the same way.  So then both top and bottom lid will move.

On finished, one just glued. You can see how it sinks the eye into a socket.

Eyes open, you can see how it sits back in the socket, that was sculpted with the thread, but I did add a little felting to build it up.

I do see more and more people interested in realistic bear making.  This I think is part of that.  There really is not a lot of information out there on how to achieve what needs to be done to make a bear look “real.” 

I have learned after working with kids at a school for 10 years that not everyone learns the same way, some people are good at figuring things out on their own, (like me) and others need to see it done in order to grasp the concept of it.  Then they take off on their own.  It has always been my goal to help those people. I will continue to do so.

I know I have said this before, but when one person takes the next step on their journey to success it benefits us all.

I do hope that if one of you out there uses this and figures out how to get those lids to close all the way without a lot of bulkiness that you will please contact me and let me know. I will keep racking my brain over this till I do it.