ThimbleBeary Originals artist Tracy Lee has always been an animal lover, so perhaps it’s no surprise that, after only five years in the teddy bear business, she’s able to create such arresting creations, come hail or high water. Lately she’s experienced both.

The hail storm hit Tracy and husband Darren’s house on a Sunday in early August. It took out 14 windows on the west side of the house, leaving only one intact. Carpet, furniture, and kitchen floor laminate were soaked by the rain. The house’s roof was damaged, and 80 percent of the siding was destroyed.

But somehow Tracy’s studio, where new creations are constantly being born, survived. “The studio fared well,” Tracy says. “One window was broken, but it didn’t go all the way through.” Lucky for her, since her latest bear was sitting on a counter close to the window. He’s 16 inches tall, made with long mohair and blue doll eyes, one of Tracy’s trademarks. He has ultrasuede eyelids, a stitched nose, sculpted toes, and a new armature that she’s been experimenting with.

You can imagine Tracy smiling as she describes him. “If he’d been hurt, that would have been devastating,” she says. And she means it. 

Tracy has a true understanding of animals. Once upon a time, she raised horses, and she still has two Arabians on the farm she shares with her husband and two sons. Their brood includes cockatiels, hamsters, guinea pigs, cats, and dogs, and that’s just inside the house. Outside there are a chicken coop, a collection of barn cats, a wild turkey, even peacocks.

Interacting with animals every day clearly agrees with Tracy’s bear making. The first thing you notice about her bears is their eyes. They are unusually expressive. They seem to follow you around the room, and each one of them seems to be pleading: Let me love you.





Tracy can’t say exactly where she draws her inspiration from, but she he pays particular attention to those eyes. “That’s my main focus,” she says. “The personality comes out in the eyes.” She uses doll eyes, which help her bears stand out from others. “The eyelids, too, make a big difference,” she says.

Once the bear is finished, Tracy has one last job to do: Naming him or her. “The name is the last thing I do,” she says. “I might start out thinking I’m making a girl, and the bear turns out to be a boy. Sometimes the personality doesn’t fit a certain name.”

Her designs vary from whimsical, such as Gilly, a blue fairy, to silly, such as Tina Turner (complete with big hair, high heels, and jean jacket), to sweet, such as Lynzie, a wisp of a bear carrying a patchwork blankie and clutching a toy of her own.

Tracy’s bear making began as a way to make presents for family members. Tracy crafted her first bears in 2004 (“Of course, they were terrible,” she laments, as artists tend to do), using a basic pattern and cheap materials. But she was hooked. She found a Nancy Tilberg book about bear making and learned some new techniques. “I made more bears the next year and gave them away to whoever would take them,” she remembers. By January 2006, with the quality of her bears improving, Tracy began thinking that she could sell her creations and make a little money to pay for her supplies. “My first bear I listed on eBay,” she says. “I wasn’t even sure I could sell him. I was so scared and nervous, but really excited.” Sure enough, Albert sold, and soon Tracy was setting up her own Web site and starting to take custom bear orders.

At that point, Tracy realized she needed a name for her company. How did she come up with ThimbleBeary? “I wanted to say something about the sewing; that’s where I came up with the thimble,” she says. “And I love to garden. There’s a bush called the thimbleberry, so that’s what I stayed with, but I spelled it as in ‘teddy bear.’”

Her career has progressed quickly in just five years. This year she made her bears available through a shop for the first time, and she’s participated in several online bear shows. She supplements those creations with work for hire: She does about one custom order per month, accounting for about a third of the bears she makes each year. She takes orders at the beginning of the year, and her schedule fills in quickly. “The challenge is that custom bears have to be something the customer is going to like,” Tracy says. “I try to help that by limiting it to designs I’ve previously made. That helps a little bit, so they know what to expect.” She offers an array of choices, from fur to paws and noses.

The rest of her time is devoted to making her own bear creations. Tracy estimates she spends about 30 hours per week on her bears, no small feat when you and your husband live on a farm with 15-year-old and 8-year-old sons. “If I have a lot going on that I can’t get to my bears and I go a couple days without working on them, it bothers me quite a lot,” she says. “I need that time. I often work in the evenings, after the kids are in bed, I stay up at night. It’s not supremely hard, but sometimes it’s challenging when there’s school events.”

Or when something unexpected happens, like the hail storm. Tracy spent days waiting for contractors and working with her family to clean up after the storm, which came just a few weeks before she was due to appear at the Chicagoland Teddy Bear Show in Schaumberg, Ill., her first-ever live bear show. The storm also came as Tracy was experimenting with a new way of constructing her bears’ armatures. “It moves quite a lot better,” she explains. “I’ll be doing more of that in the future, until I get better with it. I’m still not comfortable, but I’ll get there.”

No doubt she will. Where does Tracy see herself in five years? “Oh my gosh, I don’t even know,” she says. “One thing is I would like to be at a point where I have someone working for me for the bear making, so I can put out more bears. I have quite a demand, I have trouble meeting it sometimes.”

Five years from now that hail storm will be a distant memory, but it’s probably safe to say there will still be lots of animals in Tracy’s life—including many bears.

Fifteen-inch Lynzie is part of Tracy’s series of long-necked pandas. Made of curly kid mohair in cream and honey tan, she has blown-glass doll eyes and sculpted epoxy clay eyelids.

Finnegan is wrapped in a blue scarf to keep himself warm.

Dayna is a perfect example of Tracy’s skill with her bears’ eyes.

Ben, Angel of Peace was created from a recycled mink fur coat. He has handmade wings and stands 21 inches.

Emmie, a ThimbleBeary miniature, wears beautiful butterfly wings.

Sweet Puccino offers a wave to his potential owners.