Sewing a Sock Bear

I got a hole in one of my socks, so I did what anyone would do: cut it up to see if I could turn it into a sock bear. As one does. 

Is a sock bear a thing? There are sock monkeys, of course, and you might remember Sock Lion. Sock Bear is significantly less sophisticated, but I kinda like him. This post contains affiliate links. 

I started by cutting the sock with the hole into a simple tube with two ears, as shown below on the left. 

I turned the sock inside out and then sewed the ears together. 

That is not what I should have done. I should have sewn the tan felt onto the ears when they were open flaps. It would have been a lot easier. I backstitched a mouth onto an oval of tan felt, then sewed the brown fabric button to that. Then I sewed the snout to the sock. 

Then it was time for the googly eye buttons. I stuffed my bear with Poly-Fill, then thought about how I was going to close it to keep the stuffing in. I wanted it to stand up, so I decided the best solution was to sew an extra piece of sock around the opening. 

It's a simple project as it is, but if I were doing this with kids (a Cub Scout Bear den, for example) I would make it even easier. The biggest change would be using hot glue for most, if not all, of the sewing. I'd probably still have them sew the mouth, but you could use a brown Sharpie instead.