Welcome to Woollybuttbears,
I'm Di and I have a very unique Australian story.
I have always been into art and craft and had the
great privilege to spend my younger years growing up on an
isolated cattle station in Australia's remote outback,
5 hours drive from the nearest little town.
This is the station where I grew up, there were around 20 people living here permanently in a teeny collection of houses surrounded by vast, empty, gorgeous country:
Being the child of a schoolteacher I went to school from an early age.
Having family in Europe, I have been lucky to travel around the world in both directions.
I spent 6 months on a solo journey through China, Mongolia, Russia, Europe and Canada and have been overseas numerous times. In Switzerland I learnt the art of needlefelting from an artist friend and became inspired by her little needlefelted teddy bears sitting all around her home.
After 16 years in the top end of Australia our family moved to a remote Aboriginal community near Uluru (Ayers Rock). We were amongst 15 Europeans and around 90 Indigenous to live there.
I commuted from our community home to Uluru to finish my high school exams.
It was also here in 1994 that I helped mum nurse my father who after 8 months fighting Cancer passed away at our home in this tiny bush community.
Three years later my mother suffered a serious stroke and I am now her carer as she has ongoing health issues.
Over the next few years I lived and worked as a Social Worker in remote Aboriginal communities in and around Central Australia. But, I was always yearning to create and make art and was never really comfortable being a Social Worker, as many of you may know, its so difficult doing something you don't really enjoy.
With my family I moved to the Barossa Valley, South Australia in 2006
(Australia's great wine region, famous for Jacobs Creek, Penfolds, Wolf Blass, Seppeltsfeld etc.....)
And now, here we are, I am a daughter, a carer, a surrogate mother to 2 Alpacas, dogs, chickens and 2 red kangaroos, a bear artist and wife to my very supportive husband who faces the daily struggles of living with a progressive chronic illness.
So, whilst I have dabbled in the bear world before, especially needlefelted bears, it wasn't until the move to South Australia that I was inspired to try my hand at using fabric to make bears.
Hence Woollybuttbears came to fruition.
Over the years I have practiced, failed at designs, made strange creatures, experimented and succeeded sometimes. I have never had any formal lessons in bear making and learnt from magazines and a couple of patterns purchased many moons ago. I wish I could sew better as I would love to make cute little bear outfits, maybe in the future.
But, for now my bear making and indeed my life journey continues :0) .......
