The Repair Shop: Owners emotional over restored teddy

The Teddy Bear Ladies Amanda Middleditch and Julie Tatchell are firm favourites on the BBC’s The Repair Shop.

The pair first met when Amanda was running a teddy bear shop and she sold her creations at various outlets.

Amanda had heard of a newly-opened teddy bear shop and went in to ask whether they would sell her work.

This is where she met Julie, who had recently started working at the shop.

The pair said: “I think we were naive and I don’t think we really knew where we were going. We were still finding our feet.”

“It was an unexpected meeting and the way our friendship developed.”

Amanda went on to say how she started her career once her children had started school, as she wanted to set up her own business.

She added: “I can remember at the time, there wasn’t an awful lot of activity opportunities in the curriculum for crafting.

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“I can remember wanting to do that and one of the hardest things for me was finding what vehicle that I was going to use and it ended up being teddy bears,” she said on their Bearly Begun podcast.

Fandom shared an interview with the pair as Amanda explained the start of their joint venture.

She said: “We began working together based in our teddy bear shop in Beaulieu in the New Forest in 2006.

“It was the ‘teddy bear’ that gelled the partnership. With our combined sewing skills, we also ran workshops.

“It wasn’t long before we were receiving many requests for repairs and restorations. Not long after this, we began to dedicate our business to restorations alone.”

On the biggest challenges of the job, she added: “All the items bring their own challenges due to the condition they arrive in.

“It isn’t just following the remit for the repairs that are required, it is the emotional involvement that naturally becomes a part of the work.

“For example, when we worked on Wheely Ted for Janet – her inspirational story and our understanding of what Wheely Ted meant to her really added to the challenge.”

The Repair Shop airs on BBC One on Wednesdays at 8pm

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