Toni Betzner

After my mother passed away, I needed to find a way to commemorate her memory. I got the idea to sew plush animals for each of my siblings. I made a cat for my son, a dog for my brother, and I’m making a bear for myself and a unicorn for my sister.

I started making memorial plushes for my family, but since then, word of mouth has spread, and I’ve made plushes for people at my dojo and in my community. Most recently I made five dogs for a friend whose daughter passed away suddenly. I make roughly 1-5 plushes a month.

Toni explained “We all want to hold onto our memories. A plush is literally just that: something you can hold onto. It’s made from shirts or blankets of someone you love. It smells like them, even feels like them. It’s something that doesn’t make you said to see, but happy. That’s why I do it. So people have something they can touch and hold when they miss their loved one. It all started with my son. His grandma passed away when he was 7. He can hold this when he misses her.”