How to Make a Felt Dress-Up Bear

Make two-dimensional versions of your child's teddy bear for dress-up fun.

Felt dress-up bears are a fun alternative to paper dolls. Felt is also a sturdier material; if it gets wadded up, it bounces back, and it doesn't tear as easily as paper. The dress-up bears can have as many outfits as you wish to make for them. Make the outfits in styles and colors your child will enjoy, or make them educational. One frequent function of dress-up bears is to aid in teaching children about weather. Make clothes such as raincoats, winter coats and bathing suits and use them to show your child what apparel is correct in different weather.

Things You'll Need

• Felt
• Glue
• Cardboard
• Marker
• Paper
• Scissors
• Pins

Instructions

1. Cut a large rectangular piece of cardboard. The size is up to you, depending on how much room you want the board to take up and how many felt items you plan to create. Glue felt to the cardboard until the face of the board is covered.

2. Download or create your own teddy bear template on a piece of paper. To draw a teddy bear, draw a large circle for the head. Make two smaller circles, one on each side of the head, for ears. Draw an oval for the body. For arms, draw a long narrow oval similar in shape to a baby carrot on each side of the body. Make slightly larger baby carrot ovals for legs, with a foot on each end of the leg.

3. Pin the paper template to a piece of brown felt and cut out the shape. Make two bears if you want a boy and a girl bear. Save the templates for making more bears if one needs to be replaced. You can also use the templates to give you the correct size for the clothes you make. Draw a face on the felt bear with a marker, or cut out a felt nose, mouth and eyes and glue the pieces to the bear. Wiggle eyes can also be used.

4. Draw or download templates for articles of clothing for the bear. Cut the clothes out of different colors of felt. Pants, dresses, shoes, hats, shirts, coats, boots and skirts are all good basic clothes. Create themes, such as weather-related apparel, or just make cute outfits. Alternatively, you can print out clothes, cut out the pictures and glue them to a felt backing.

5. Place the bears and the clothes on the felt board. The felt will stick. The child can remove the clothing she wishes to use for the bears and layer the felt onto the bears, adding or removing items as desired.

References

• Fun Felt: Dress Me Bear Felt Weather Teddy Bears, Girl and/or Boy
• Mama Smiles: Felt Board Dress-up Bears
• The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints: Making and Keeping Aids for Family Home Evening
• Little Sprouts: Our Weather Bear (and How You Can Make Your Own!)