In October 2025, an American artist friend of mine asked me if I would be interested in contributing a piece to a group show he was putting together, the idea being that each contributor would submit a custom soft sculpture in the vein of a Beanie Baby. I was very interested in participating and decided to take up the challenge, even though at this point my sewing experience was limited to basic mending of clothes.
Beginning in January 2026, I took apart stuffed toys and investigated mid-2000s teddy bear enthusiast websites on the Wayback Machine for inspiration, working through two prototypes before figuring out the final pattern. In March, I completed my piece, which I named "Possum". You can see the finished product in my art gallery here, and in the photos below.
The entire piece is hand-stitched. I used a second-hand grey faux fur vest for the bulk of the fur, with the remainder from my local fabric shop. The whiskers are made from fishing line, and the eyes and nose are glazed ceramic. Possum is stuffed with polyethylene pellets and polyester fibre harvested from three other stuffed toys.
The freely available patterns I found online proved an invaluable resource when I was making my own pattern, so it seems only fair that I provide mine here for the benefit of others. You can download a printable pattern with instructions by clicking below:
The file is a four-page PDF and is set up for single-sided printing on A4 paper.
Above: The finished Possum
Above: First prototype
Above: Second prototype
Above: Construction underway on the final version
Above: Ceramic eyes and noses, fresh out of the kiln
Above: Annotations to my pattern, used when figuring out how I wanted to arrange different colours