Sarah Brown
Walking through the coral-colored door at 1228 Main St., it’s clear that Renita Sews proprietor Renita Cohen has a flair for vintage comfort.
Freshly painted white and yellow walls blanket the room, with antique sewing machines on one side and a plaid couch embellished with vintage embroidered and needlepoint pillows on the other.
Cohen sits at a desk that features a yo-yo quilt as a backdrop and her favorite vintage black Singer Featherweight with the tell-tale gold Simanco pattern. Mid-century lamps, vintage irons, wooden spools and other sewing-related items of old invite guests to stay a bit longer to admire their charm.
“I just wanted a place where ladies can come and do what they’d like, if they want to hand stitch or crochet, or just a place to come to,” she said.
Following her retirement from home health and hospice this past summer, Cohen started a sewing business for the community, but the essence of her enterprise is custom-designed memory bears.
“Memory bears are an item that’s made from the clothing of your loved ones after they’ve passed, so you can have something to hang on to that’s theirs,” she said.
Cohen made the first bear for her daughter, Angelita Sanchez, whose partner, Bob Johnson, passed away in 2016.
“He was my soulmate,” Sanchez said. “He was my mentor. He was my best friend. He was everything to me.”
After his unexpected death, Sanchez found herself with a lot of his clothes, but no Bob Johnson to wear them.
“I just wanted to hug him again, and I wasn’t able to ever hug him again,” she said. “So (my mom) made something that I could hug, and it looks like a replica of him.”
Made from Johnson’s clothes, the “Bob Bear” wears a collared, blue-striped hickory shirt with zippers and red suspenders, plus a little pocket watch.
A few years later, Sanchez passed Bob Bear on to his mother. When Cohen made him, she was still working in hospice full-time, but she continued making bears for those she worked with and for others who asked.
Some include special details.
“I am kind of meticulous when I make the bears; maybe overly meticulous,” Cohen said.
A bear made in memory of anesthesiologist Dr. Jaimy Patton included scrub pants and a scrub cap. Rachelle Alley ordered several bears for her family in memory of her grandpa, Richard Alley, and a name was stitched into the foot for each of the recipients, depending on what they called their loved one: Dad, Poppy, Gramps.
Another bear was made for the family of a young rodeo man who only wore Wranglers. Cohen designed it in jeans with miniature belt loops and pockets she stitched the W logo onto, then added the leather Wrangler tags.
“Renita does a fantastic job truly capturing who that person was,” said Rachel Maynard, who ordered several bears four years ago on behalf of her late grandmother, Beverly Shaver. “My grandma and I used to play cards all the time, and Renita found these little playing cards and attached them to one of the bears. Another bear, she made it look like it had an apron on.”
More recently, Maynard received a Zach Bear in honor of her six-year-old son, Zachary Maynard, who died from injuries sustained after he was struck by a runaway jet ski at Lewis Creek Park in 2020.
“I made a little bear for her from his clothing,” Cohen said. “That one was tough. But she waa s so grateful to have that. It’s just something nice to give back to them. Something that they can hang on to. I mean, you can’t ever say anything or do anything to make anything different. You can maybe just help a little bit.”
According to Maynard, the bear’s clothes were the last clothes Zach wore while in the hospital. His parents and brother sleep with the bear sometimes, and Maynard said it helps relieve her anxiety.
“It really makes you still feel close to them, just being able to snuggle them,” she said, referring to both her Gram Bear and Zach Bear.
To date, Cohen estimates she’s made about 40 bears since starting four years ago. Uninterrupted, Cohen could probably finish a basic bear in about five hours, but those with more details or difficult fabric can take at least twice as long, she said. As such, she charges around $75 to $150 per bear.
“If she could, she’d do it for free,” Sanchez said. “But it takes a lot of time on some of those bears.”
Other services Cohen offers from her little sewing room are light mending and alterations, and adding patches for the Sweet Home police and fire departments. As she grows her business, she wants to hold sewing classes for children and adults. Sanchez helps her mom with the enterprise’s marketing and social media aspects.
Cohen, who’s been sewing since the 1970s, grew up in Sweet Home, married her high school sweetheart, Yosef Cohen, then moved south for many years before returning to her hometown. She started working in the healthcare industry at 18, and worked for Samaritan Evergreen Hospice for 28 years.
“I enjoy doing hands-on work with people,” Cohen said. “I liked to have something to do with my hands, and helping people was just a part of that. I found it very, very fulfilling to help families.”
Although retired since last summer, Cohen can still find herself doing something she enjoys while helping families with her hands.
“The thing that I really want to do is just be able to give a little bit back to people that are really hurting, or people who need something,” she said. “Because there is not another service like this in this little teeny area. And, you know, it’s my hometown.”