April/May 2011 Vol 27 No 4 Pansy photo by Rhonda Lee
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Sherry Attard Is Keeping Alive The Teddy Bear Legacy Article & Photo By Gail Jokerst While it may be true that you cannot make a silk purse from a sow’s ear, you could make an adorable teddy bear from an old flannel shirt. Well, you could if you were Sherry Attard. This Columbia Falls artisan loves to root around rummage sales and thrift shops for clothes, linens, and blankets that others deem worthless but to her merit rescue. Where someone else sees merely a past-prime jacket, Sherry envisions a cuddly teddy bear just waiting to emerge. “I like to take a used piece of clothing or coat that has been discarded and see if it can be recycled into something that someone would want to care about to keep or give as a gift,” says Sherry, who finds that each cast-off item “speaks to her” of what type of bear it will become. This talented woman has spent most of her life working with fabric both old and new. Her mother taught her to use a sewing machine when she was in the third grade and in two years, the budding tailor could follow dress patterns and make her own clothes. From then on, Sherry has never been far away from a needle and thread. She created her first bears for her three sons while they were growing up. All of them now have children of their own, who have also played with teddy bears Sherry has sewn just for them. Since she began to design and stitch stuffed animals back in 1988, Sherry estimates she has produced several thousand teddy bears. “I started out by wanting to make some extra money for Christmas and decided to rent a table at a local bazaar,” recalls Sherry, who now has an active year-round business. “My mom used to sell her handmade doll clothes to earn Christmas money; that’s where I got the idea. I initially chose teddy bears because they seemed to be universally popular. So I found a pattern in a magazine for a bear that I thought looked cute and tried it.” From the eager response of her first customers, Sherry knew immediately that she had found her niche. However, in retrospect, she admits those early bruins would not pass muster by her current exacting standards. Wisely, she allowed herself to improve as she handcrafted bear after bear, progressed beyond her mistakes, and began to master her trade. “It was an evolution of learning to do things better,” notes Sherry. The hallmarks of her bears are that they are jointed (their arms and legs move) and laden with character from their hand-embroidered noses to their soft paws. Sherry creates those charming faces by taking time to play with each (Continued on page 57)