sweater dilemma

Here is the most recent little sweetie I've been working on. The customer who asked for her requested that she be as small as possible. Well, I was limited to the finest yarn I had, because I didn't want to buy three skeins of yarn for one tiny toy. The finest stuff I had was alpaca fingering weight that a friend gave me, which originally came from her mother's stash. I have no idea how old the yarn is, but it's only slightly nibbled by moths, and makes lovely socks. I only had 2 shades of brown, so I used some grape kool-aid to dye a bit for the dark points. It worked great, and the kitty smells like grapes :)

I used 2.25mm needles, so the fabric would come out dense and not show the stuffing. She is so tiny and adorable, like a new kitten! I was going to use bead for her eyes, but once I stuck the buttons on her face, I just knew she needed those huge turquoise eyes.

I've also been working on a big teddy, since I only ever made Strudel from the pattern. I'm using some fluffy white acrylic yarn I bought a while ago, so the toy will be fine to give a child. Machine-washable toys are usually a good idea when wee ones are involved. I wanted to design a new sweater, rather than put the new toy in overalls. But I having rather a lot of trouble with that. I had the second attempt 90% done when I realized I hated the way it fits.

I decided the problem comes down to this: I am trying to design the sweater based on techniques used for people sweaters, but teddies are not shaped like people! The teddy has no shoulders, short arms, and a chubby tummy (okay, you could say this about some people, but I'm sure their sweaters fit terribly too). I wanted it to have a yoke with pretty stripes in different colours, but I don't think this will work at all. I'm back to square one, and not sure how to proceed.

A raglan sweater isn't much better, because by the time I've done enough increases (or decreases) to get the body and sleeves wide enough, the underarm is nearly at the teddy's wrist. I could do drop-shoulders with a basic set-in sleeve like most of the other sweaters I've made for the toys. They're simple and fit all right. The stripes I want to do might not look quite as good as on a yoke or raglan top, but I'm going to have to make a compromise somewhere. I just want to decide what I'm doing, before ripping out the sweater another 2-3 times.