Welcome to our very first newsletter,

We are very excited that you can join us on our first news letter. We hope you enjoy and continue to enjoy our Website further on. We hope we can be a help to you as much as we can. We will try to put in many tips and helpful suggestions in as we go along. As well as other useful websites that I find useful. This is a new site so I hope you can BEAR WITH US if there are some minor glitches or hickups. Hopefully none!

Our first exciting catalogue has a huge diverse range of bears that give will surely warm to everyone’s heart. We couldn’t just have a select few bears as the ideas came flowing in, the bear catalogue grew. Therefore, when we reached 200 I decided that was enough for the first catalogue. We have a further 200+ bears that will be coming out later on, very slowly, they are still hibernation. They will be coming out hopefully monthly or fortnightly. Depends if I can bribe them with honey to awaken them (LOL).

We are starting out as environmentally friendly business and we use recycled paper for printing, as well as we have refillable ink cartridges at home to save on the cost on the environment. We are really concerned on the impact that our business plays on the environment so we are going to not send plastic bags through the mail, unless it is raining to protect your product. We will be using brown waxed paper bags that are also recyclable. Please not that the plastic bags that I did buy are recyclable and are from recyclable material. So please don’t get offended when we post your product in a brown paper bag. If you are offended we are sorry.

A bit about us and how we started. My patchwork teddy bears quilt started 11 years ago when I first designed a simple teddy bear for my son. That is the 1 in the top right hand corner near the business name. I thought there simply isn’t any bear quilts out there that are easy to sew or cute enough. After taking it to playgroup all the mothers from playgroup wanted 1 and it was a huge hit but I never really thought of marketing them I just had the 1 bear. It came to the point that my sons first bear quilt was tragically stolen. Fortunately, I had enough fabric to make another 1. That to got stolen.

He is now at the age of 11 sews his own. Our son is a very much of this family business, either sewing, suggesting many of his wonderful creative imaginative ideas and trying to help. With out him some of these bears would of never existed ie bear bum bear or a few the others. Boys do have a wicked sence of humour and there a few bears I will not draw for him.

My husband also sews but mainly overlooks the creation of the colours of the bears and other business ideas like marketing. He is also a busy athlete and a Level 3 middle distance steeplechase coach which he competes at himself.

But in November 2005 I retired, I gave up working as a chef, got married to my beautiful husband Garry and we decided to have more children. It was then while shifting from beautiful Wollongong to Sydney I came across my sons old teddy bear quilt pattern and decided to see if I could make different bears. I found out that everyone has a particular favourite bear that they love and they have put in many suggestions to my ever growing collection. I must admit I could only come up with 35 of my own and soon it grew to an amazing 200+.

I have been sewing for about 11 years, mainly clothes but have made a number of quilts for friends. What I love about these quilts you can take them with you and put them in small packs for travelling. I have sat many an afternoon out at Homebush Athletic Track in the middle of competing and watching events sewing. Going away I’m always putting something to work on in the car. I love hand sewing the bears and seeing it come alive in my hands. Though I do admit my hands do get sore after a while. Yes I’m always pricking my fingers with the needles if I get to tired. I do enjoy sewing the face the most its like its forming its own personality & adventure.

I love machine embroidery and hopefully one day to put these bears on embroidery file. But until that day, we have a large number of bears to still to edit and print off . We are going to be releasing more of our bears back into the wild web page so look out for them! Most are still in hibernation but if I get an over response of 1 particular bear it will come out roaring and growling as a old bear does.

We are going to have a new look format to our patterns in the next few months so JUST BEAR US and you’ll see the changes. It will be the same information that’s on the pattern piece but just a new look.

We have tried to make these quilts and patterns as affordable as possible. So I hope you love these bears as much as we do and just have the same amount of fun sewing them too. We continue to look for ways to make your quilting life easier, supplying helpful hints and free information as much as possible.

We will be having specials coming closer to the end of the year so please tell your friends too.

We are a home based business so all the orders we do is either on line or over the phone we cant except at the door inquiries for we are not a shop front as yet.

I hope to be hearing from you beary soon.

We hope you enjoy being Hip 2 Bear Square.

Cheri & Garry Womsley.