Textile Teddies & Doggies in Soft, Sweet, Soothing Pastel-Coloured Checked Prints & Stripes

Almost every week, we're out combing the textile shops to get nice fabrics for the many fabric products that we make. We have traditional patchwork blankets, beans sprout husks pillows and bolsters, floormats and tablemats made by the elderly; FABulous fabric journals made by two young ladies and their full-time housewife aunt; and our ever popular Textile Teddies and Doggies made by a team of bear makers from humble backgrounds.

As we want our fabric products to be affordable to the general public, we have to constantly scour the marketplace to find the best fabrics below a certain cost. Priority is always given to the small 'mom and pop' fabric shops that we want to benefit. These are run by elderly or poor families. From these shops we get most of our fabrics for our elderly enterprise products mentioned above.

For our textile teddies and doggies, we will spend more on fabrics as the emphasis is on the beauty of the print. We still need to watch our cost which means we have to search harder and farther for the best designs in the price range we can afford.  It was on one of these searches that we came across these fabrics in soft sweet soothing pastel colours. The fact that they are not floral prints offers a nice change from our usual designs of Textile Teddies and Doggies.

Here they are. Hope you like them:

Our Textile Teddies in three sizes ~ Jumbo, Big, and Small with keychain.

All seven patterns of our Textile Teddies.

Textile Doggies in Big and Small sizes. We ran out of fabrics
for the doggies, so these are all that we have.

NOTE: As usual, we only make just one Jumbo size with each fabric pattern, 2-4 Big size, and less than 10 Small size. Each Textile Teddy or Doggy is now priced at ~ Small ($8), Big ($17) and Jumbo ($29) for purchase online or at the social enterprise PaTH Market at VivoCity. In retail shops the prices are a little higher due to the higher operating cost.

Crocheted KOOLLY BEARS and GANG

Idiosyncratic, unusual, peculiar, odd, strange, eccentric, unpredictable and always INCREDIBLY CREATIVE ... all these describe the unique characteristics of our KOOLLY BEARS and GANG. And the wonderful person behind our quirky collection is a young lady with an equally kool name, Third.

As a child, Third would watch with fascination whenever the aunty in her neighbourhood sat down to crochet. By age seven, she had learnt to crochet from the aunty and was soon crafting scarves and sweaters for her mum.

Third makes a humble living from her craft; and it has been a joy to work with someone so full of ideas and passion to make our series of quirky KOOLLY BEARS and GANG. We're also tapping into Third's talent to develop some interesting products together with a voluntary welfare organisation in Singapore which helps children with special needs. We'll have a posting on this community project very soon.

For now, please meet our wonderfully quirky KOOLLY BEARS and GANG:

TO ORDER, please email georgewong@teddythotz.com to find out what we have and their prices.

FABulous Fabric-wrapped Journals in beautiful Oriental/Japanese Prints

We first developed our FAB Journals in November last year (see our post in November 2010 for the story behind this project) and they've been a hit. There's just an amazing range of FABULOUS FABRICS (hence the name FAB Journals) in the marketplace that we can't wait to use them for our FAB Journals.

In our latest selection, we focused mainly on fabrics with beautiful Oriental/Japanese prints. Here are some examples:

We also have some FAB Journals in other types of fabrics and prints:

TO VIEW all the designs in this selection, email georgewong@teddythotz.com for our PDF catalogue.

Handcrocheted HOODY BEARS

From the early days of our social enterprise, we have tapped into the crochet skills of coconut plantation workers, rice farmers and working mothers who crochet during their free time to earn extra money.

In this posting, we're proud to show off the excellent crochet skills of Ole, a young working mother who crochets in her spare time to supplement her family income. Ole learnt to crochet when she was a little girl from her mother.

Ole's mother, who lives in a farming community in the countryside, helps with the crocheting whenever we have an order. At times, the neighbours, who are farmers, would also be engaged, thus drawing some extra income from the business that we generate.

Showcased below are our popular HOODY BEARS ~ teddy bears in the hood of different animals and other characters. We introduced the "Hood" concept to Ole who was at the time crocheting only cute animals; and she has made a great success with the idea as can be seen here:

Our family of HOODY BEARS in three sizes ~ small with keychain, medium and large.
A few of the bears have their hood pulled back so you can see the bear face.

Hoody Chicken Bear and Hoody Doraebear (medium and large).

Hoody Cow Bear, Hoody Panda Bear and Hoody Zebra Bear.

Hoody Frog and Hoody Elephant Bears.

Hoody Giraffe and Hoody Pig Bears.

Hoody Kangaroo and Hoody Monkey Bears.

Hoody Rat, Hoody Dog and Hoody Rabbit Bears.

Hoody Spiderbear and Hoody Ultrabear.

Hoody Tiger and Hoody Robin Bears.

Our range of small Hoody Bears with keychain.

TO ORDER: Please email us here to request for our latest catalogue to make your selection. Prices have been revised slightly from those indicated on our website.