Chantal Bears

My name is Chantal Giroux and I have been a professional bear maker for over 8 years. Like a lot of us, I’ve been attracted to teddy bears even since my childhood, probably just like every child.

That furry soft friend that keeps little ones safe at night while the moonlight shine on them, seeing the twinkle in their eyes that makes children feel warm and cozy inside has always been a part of my life. As I grew older and had children of my own, I had the chance to see that magic work on my daughters.  The thought of making bears was already on my mind back then because I found that manufactured teddy bears looked sometimes ordinary and even stern compared to ones sewed with love thread.

To this day, I still remember my friends being stunned at the idea that I had asked a teddy bear for my 18th birthday. As we had lived in Africa for the first part of my life, we had lost everything including all of our toys due to war. One of my friends which I confined into gave me a teddy bear in a swing, it was the best gift I could ever have had and I passed it on to my children.

Later on, my daughter had asked me in 2000 to make her a bear because she had a pajama day at her school and she thought it would make a nice touch to her outfit for that special school event. How can I describe this attempt? I can tell you that it was brown, crocheted with thick worsted weight yarn. I was not proud at all of the results but, if you had a bit of imagination, it seriously did look like a bear. The best part of it was that my daughter liked it a lot.
I then decided to start making bears that were a bit more complicated and through the process of trial and errors, I kept on trying to achieve my goal. My two first bears were named Johannie and Laura which are my daughters' names.

When we moved to Saint John, NB, Canada, for my husband’s job, I had a really hard time because as we got there at the end of the school year, I could not start teaching, so I had to find something else to do.
I then decided to make bears and try to sell them on Ebay. I started making listings and noticed that people liked my creations. Which made me want to make more and want to try something different, so I started working with fabrics, drawing patterns on them  and sewing them up. Then I started mixing fabric textures and colors etc.. As time went, I realized that this hobby of mine had become a passion and was becoming a way of life. I got all the support I needed (and even more) from my amazing husband and family so the Bear Making Artist Chantal Giroux was born.

That same year was also the year where I tried different styles to try and see if one style fitted me better but, as soon as I was trying a style, I was changing patterns around, even throwing away parts replacing them with other and then decided to make whatever came to my mind, so to this day, I still cannot really describe that style, unless you accept ''my own kind of style'' as an answer.

In 2007, after a surgery, I lost my eyesight in one of my eyes and I was afraid that I could not continue, but I just could not get away from what had become my lifestyle. So I had to learn how to work with one eye and making bears made me feel better. Although I was not realizing it at the time, I found the comfort of my childhood in teddy bears.

I have to say that I adore making bears because it lets my imagination come to life and allows me use my knowledge of other crafts, such as tatting, knitting, embroidery, sculpting and a lot of others that adds my personal touch to my creations. I also enjoy the fact that every bear that I make have its own expression. It is probably for this reason that I always start with the head, it may not yet have ears or body but it already makes me smile and eager to finish it.