Meet the bear ladies!

Hello I’m Kay, married mum of two boys.  I work from my home sewing studio in Manchester, I am your point of contact,  I answer all emails and phone calls myself and do all of the social media. I arrange appointments with customers for those of you who want to bring your clothing and help me to design the bears. I design the bears and cut and iron the pattern pieces. I hand finish the bears, join the limbs to the body and embroider their faces, then I take a photo to send to you! I’m proud to offer a very personal service.

I have sewn most of my life and have always been weirdly fascinated by the old needle and thread, our relationship goes back a long way!  One of my earliest memories of school was being taught how to do cross stitch, by my teacher Mrs Sandals. I must have been about 6.  I remember trying to copy the way she used her little sewing scissors, she opened them by sliding the blades apart between her fingers to cut a thread, without touching the handles! No idea why this stuck in my mind! Took me many years of practice to master this technique… :D

My Mums lovely friend Nina who lived across the road had an old Singer treadle sewing machine, set in a wooden cabinet, I used to admire it, but never saw it in action until one day…. I remember feeling really special when she let me have a go on such a grown up and slightly dangerous piece of equipment!

So fast forward to high school, I absolutely loved needlework class!  I made a sewing bag then a skirt in no time, then my teacher let me make a selection of stuffed animals, a blue teddy bear, a penguin and an Indian elephant with a fringed blanket on its back, all spring to mind! I passed my CSE in Fashion and clothing with flying colours!  Then I left school and decided to follow in my sisters footsteps and become a sewing machinist.  I made ladies clothing for Laura Ashley, Burton Group and Next when it was a very new company.  In 1990 I started working in a boutique bridal shop, I wanted to learn how to make wedding dresses so I could make my own! I worked on beautiful silk wedding  dresses with long trains and big puff sleeves (This was the 80s and 90s!) Then is 1992 I married my husband Mike, made my own wedding dress, two bridesmaids, two Paige boys and my mums suit! I made a total of 170 pastel coloured silk roses by hand for mine and my bridesmaid dresses!  I was taught  many new intricate skills, piped seaming, buttons and loops, sewing boning into bodices, Petticoat underskirts, beadwork and embroidery. I worked in bridal wear for many years, carrying out fittings and doing alterations too.  In 2006 I set up an online bridal business making wraps and boleros.  ‘Wrapor’ (Can still be found on Google!) was really successful for a number of years, then in 2012 I started making my bears and they eventually took over as my main workload, so I decided to close Wrapor and concentrate on my bears full time! I feel like I have gone full circle now when I get a beautiful wedding dress to cut up!

Gail is my big sister, the other half of Lily’s Love. Gail has also been sewing most of her life, in fact she suggested it to me when I left school, it made sense at the time as my brother was also in the clothing trade and there were still plenty of clothing factories in Manchester in converted cotton mills originally built during the Industrial Revolution, so plenty of options for employment.  And here we are 30 years later, the factories have all gone, but we are still busy sewing bees!

Gail works so hard behind the scenes, machine sewing and hand stitching and stuffing the bears, before giving them back to me to put together and embroider the faces. She is such a hard worker, I’m very lucky to have her, she is a perfectionist and always does a lovely job, she should have guns of steel from all of the stuffing she does! Gail also manages to look after Heidi her 4 year old granddaughter who is a gorgeous little ‘live wire’ Gails sewing skills come in handy to make the odd dressing up or amazing fancy dress outfit on request! 

My friend Margaret also has a very important role!  Margaret makes beautiful bridal and Communion veils Dream Veils and I met her back in 2010 at a bridalwear shop opening event.  We have been good friends ever since and she now stitches all of the embroidery for my bears and also makes the embroidered hearts for me. Margaret has a fancy industrial embroidery machine that is a work of art in itself,  she has the special skills that I don’t have and can always manage to fulfil any special requests I have!