Published: September 15, 2006 11:33 am      

Remem-bear-ance

Lyndonville resident uses wedding dresses, shirts and other materials to create stuffed bears

LYNDONVILLE — She's a social worker by day, but come evenings and weekends Vivian Neroni of Lyndonville is a bear-making machine.

"My mom makes bears every night and she loves doing it," daughter Jennifer Neroni said.

Being in the bear-making business is a way for Neroni to therapeutically release the tensions of her day job as youth care coordinator at the Department of Social Services.

“About 10 years ago, I started making bears and dolls,” she said.

About eight years ago, Neroni was asked to make one of her bears for a friend whose father had passed away, which is where the original concept came from. Using fabric from a suit that once belonged to the friend's father, Neroni constructed one of the first Always RememBears.

Always RememBear is a specialty item that is part of the collection Neroni has lovingly named Memory Bears.

Her obsession with the cuddly creatures began because she wanted to be a collector.

“I started making bears because I wanted to collect them, but they're expensive and I couldn't afford it," Neroni said.

Since she started making bears, Neroni has made more than 400, many of which were made and sold to customers wanting to remember their loved ones.

All of the patterns Neroni uses are originals. The Memory Bear pattern is one that she designed from the ground up.

But there are more patterns rattling around in her brain than she can manage to make all at once. Now, it's just a matter of getting them out of her brain and onto paper.

Though the bears are her specialty, she makes other fully poseable figurines and dolls as well.

On a set of shelves in her Americana-style living room there are tiny bears, a fluorescent pink ballerina elephant, bears in a bag, Raggedy Annes, and figurines made of polymer clay and paper mache.

Brenda Radzinski has become a loyal customer, having bought four Always RememBear's from Neroni.

"I've seen several that she's made for people that we work with," she said.

Radzinski first found out about the bear-making business through work. She and Neroni are fellow social workers, but are in different departments at the agency.

The bears that she asked Neroni to make were made in memory of Radzinski's grandmother. Her bears are made of her grandmother's table linens.

"She can make them out of about any fabric," Radzinski said.

The extensive list of materials that Neroni has used includes suits, flannel shirts, wedding dresses, mink coats, and old Dale Earnhardt Jr. T-shirts. But that's only the beginning of the list.

Regardless of the material brought to Neroni, the bears always mean something special for the buyer, she said.

Most of the business that's come her way has been through word of mouth advertising and the loyalty of customers she's had in the past who come back to her for more.

The business she picks up by word of mouth has been wonderful, but Neroni has plans to eventually get a Web site up and running to help spread the word.

"It's not like I have a well-known name outside of this area," she said.