If you ever saw Patricia Li Klayman fronting Grand Theft Auto, a 70s-punk-inspired four-piece that gained some local notoriety several years ago in part for her hell-raising style, you probably would have never guessed she’d end up making teddy bears and sock monkeys for a living. “Now I’ve become this,” she jokes, gesturing around her studio in her Humboldt Park condo. About a half-dozen sock monkeys still in need of eyes are perched on a windowsill. Fuzzy teddy bears in printed dresses and overalls, ranging in size from four inches to ten, sit between neatly folded piles of fabric on a bookshelf. Their oversize heads have low-set eyes and flat faces with fur that’s a little matted and worn away, like it’s already been subjected to years of kisses and smushing. That’s one of Klayman’s trademarks. “A lot of those antique bears are pretty quirky,” she says. “They get so funny after years and years–the arms, the nose. I love how they get all worn. That way they’re not so precious.”
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Klayman, 36, only started sewing teddy bears in 2003, but among collectors–known as arctophiles–she’s already a minor celebrity. Working under her Asian name, Peng Peng (her mom is Chinese), she’s developed a unique style she describes as “traditional technique with an Asian-infused eclectic look.” Last year she appeared on the HGTV series Crafters Coast to Coast to give a demonstration on bear making, and she was the subject of a March cover story in the British magazine Teddybear Club International. Fans in the UK have started a Yahoo discussion group devoted to her work and at least one has a Peng Peng tattoo.
Although she’d never taken a needle to anything other than the occasional button or patch, Klayman found a pattern on the Web and made her own tiny bear out of some wool she had lying around. “It was really crude,” she says. Soon afterward she bought a how-to book and started learning different stitches. The first bear she sold–a traditional-looking mini bear named Charles, after her brother–went for $20 on eBay. Making miniature bears was an obsession for a while. “My smallest one was under two inches,” she says. “It becomes a sick perversion–how small can I go?” But she soon invested in a sewing machine, a metal 50s model she calls “indestructible,” to start making larger bears. She bought special hand-dyed mohair fabric imported from Germany, which can run as much as $150 a yard, and painted on handblown glass eyes. For inspiration she mined Japanese craft books and anime.
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): photos/Paul L. Merideth.
