The Uthando Project: Sewing Dolls for South Africa

Dolls bring many people great joy. Dolls can also bring the opportunity to spread joy. Aussie doll maker Julie Dodd became involved with the Uthando Project in 2018. The Uthando Project is a Perth-based charity that started 20 years ago.  Uthando is a Zulu word meaning love. The dolls are made by sewers in Australia and donated to children in need in Kwa Zulu Natal, South Africa.

The charity was founded by Julie Stone a child psychologist and early developmental specialist in Kia Zulu Natal.  Julie was working out of a clinic. In the waiting room was one plastic Caucasian doll and every child who visited wanted to take that doll home. When Julie came back to Australia she asked all her friends who could sew, to help her make comforter dolls to gift to her young clients who were suffering from abuse, neglect and malnutrition.

The charity has grown over the years and there are now groups all over Australia. Approximately 5,000 dolls are donated each year, but there are over 11 million children living in poverty in South Africa, so there’s lots of doll making still to be done.

Julie Dodd, a retired fashion technology teacher, became involved in 2018 when she met the chairperson of the Perth branch of the charity. Julie began to enlist sewers from her community in Sydney. Some of the many sewers she has enlisted are featured on her Instagram (link at the end). 

Each doll is donated with a spare change of clothes, some undies, a blanket, a handbag, and a backpack to put all the goodies in. Julie pattern makes the dolls clothes and works with a digitizer to machine embroider the dolls. Some of the garments are made in the hoop of an embroidery machine. 

Dodd says she receives so many inspiring stories and photos from the five organizations who distribute the dolls in South Africa. 

More about the dolls and the organization can be found at the Uthando Project Website. Also for heartwarming inspiration, follow Julie Dodd’s Instagram.

A Maker of Tea Parties and Dolls

If ever there was a doll made for tea parties, it is Sharon Rohloff's dolls. They come dressed to sip tea in a beautiful flower garden and talk about their recent trips to art museums and Europe. They are delightful, retro, cheerful and timeless.

The bright vintage style fabrics, old fashioned hats and bright hair give the dolls an ethereal charm of early 20th century paintings. her dolls can be found at Pink Ginger Kitty.

Sharon has been sewing soft toys for less than two years, but she read a lot, and experimented a lot.

"In January 2014, I found a copy of Stuffed magazine by Stampington in a thrift shop. I took it home and devoured every article over a weekend. I was amazed to see so many unique, fun dolls and read about artists thriving as doll makers. Encouraged by those artists who drew their own patterns, I decided to give doll making a try. I set up my grandma’s 1970’s Singer sewing machine and started playing around with fabric I found at the thrift store. My first toys were a wonky blue donkey and a pink cat with kittens. I was smitten with them and soon sewing all sorts of softies.

The Garden Party Girl Dolls doing what they do best

"My Garden Party Girl dolls came about because I love to mix fabric patterns and I wanted a doll I could build a story around. This doll has a ladylike style reminiscent of the 1920’s. I imagine them all as friends and neighbors that live and interact in the same small village. Their colored yarn hair, patterned dresses and bendable arms and legs was a look that lent itself to endless variations. This was important to me because I get bored without variety."

Sharon's studio

"I am inspired by many things: the seasons, flowers, colors I see in décor magazines, museums and art books, the fashions in PBS series such as Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries, and pretty cotton fabrics in fabric stores. 

"I also love going to thrift stores looking for pretty items that remind me of my grandmother’s home. She was a sewer, a great cook and loved pastel colors. I like finding old notions and ribbons, floral vintage tea tins from England, vintage fabrics such as tablecloths from the ‘40’s and ‘50’s, colorful vintage hankies, toys and children’s books from the ‘50’s – ‘60’s, pretty much anything with colorful graphics. Many of the vintage tablecloths and fabrics that end up at thrift stores have light damage or staining. That makes them perfect for up cycling into doll clothes! Its really fun turning something discarded as old and tired into an elegant, cheerful toy that’s truly one of a kind.

Sharon's Doll Making Tips:

• Sew two seams all the way around your doll’s body to make a sturdy toy. This anchors arms and legs and helps keep the seams from bursting as you stuff the doll. I also use a second layer of muslin behind the face of my dolls so the knots of my embroidery thread won’t show through.
• Check your seams on both the front and back of the unstuffed doll to be sure you caught all the layers before turning it right side out.
• If you are just starting to make doll clothes, break down your clothing ideas into basic shapes. Many pieces can be developed from a “T” or arrow shape. Skirts are often a square or trapezoid, gathered at the top.
• Lay your doll down on a piece of white drawing paper and trace around it for a body pattern. I use rolls of white paper from the kid’s section of craft stores. You can use the body pattern to draw top and skirt patterns on tracing paper. Once you have a top or skirt pattern you like, cut it apart and make a mockup from inexpensive fabric like muslin or a vintage sheet. You can also try adding variations such as a ribbon tie at the neck, an elastic waist or a ruffle at the bottom edge.

Sharon and her dolls can be found:

On Etsy, on Sharon's blog and by following her on Instagram.

A Preview of the New ExtraSmall Phoebes

If you follow me on Instagram this may be old news.  But after many requests, I have finally developed a small doll. A smaller line of Phoebes.

And that there will be an ExtraSmall Phoebe giveaway on Instagram.

New ExtraSmall Phoebe is a tiny bit over half of the size of regular sized Phoebe. She is just over a foot and weighs only a few ounces and one hand can fit easily around her tiny waist. Even a child sized hand.

Each doll will come with two outfits, and a playful trench coat and the tiniest little pair of shoes just like the regular sized Phoebe's shoes--100% wool felt Mary Janes with little buttons.

ExtraSmall phoebe Sets will be in my Etsy shop at the end of the week.

And...

The Giveaway will be one ExtraSmall Phoebe set. How to enter will appear on Instagram on Thursday. Contest will close Sunday morning. Exact times to be announced later.

Click here to find me on Instagram.

One of the new ExtraSmall Phoebes

ExtraSmall Phoebe and Regular Sized Phoebe

ExtraSmall Phoebe

The "line" of ExtraSmall Phoebes

I'm the featured shop on Etsy!

I'm not a selfie taker. I don't like being in pictures, I'm more about taking pictures of my kids and my work. But I could not pass up the opportunity when Etsy asked me last November to be their Featured Shop.

The preparation, photoshoot with Cynthia August, who is fabulous, and I mean fabulous, and the interview were all fun and helped me see my business in new ways.

Here's my story on the Esty site:

Featured Shop: Phoebe&Egg

The Phoebe&Egg Studio, photo by Cynthia August

Behind the scenes at Phoebe&Egg, photo by Cynthia August

The Phoebe&Egg Studio, photo by Cynthia August

Sister dolls

I recently received two custom requests for my African American doll with the fun braids. One request was a for a jointed Baby Egg and one was for a toddler Phoebe doll. They look like sisters who are maybe 18 months apart.

The hair for this doll is done by wrapping wool yarn as though casting on for a knitting project at the end of each braid. Then I take the ends of the yarn and with a needle weave them back through and cut them.

I thought it would be fun to do a photo shoot before the ends were woven in—Medusa style.

Soon they ship off to different homes.

Phoebe doll before her hair is finished.

Sisters dolls!

Doll Dressmaking: Useful Tools

Later this week I will be uploading a basic doll dress base for us to start the lessons with. I will use this base to teach some sewing techniques and some basic pattern drafting.

To even begin, you will most likely need to make some very rudimentary adjustments to ensure the pattern base fits your doll. So before altering this base pattern, I thought I'd show you my favorite pattern making and altering tools. 

The most basic tool: a measuring tape. You will need to know lengths and circumferences of various parts of your doll before you make adjustments.

Basic

You will need to alter pattern pieces. This is best done by tracing with a pencil and tracing paper. Lots of erasing. More tracing. And sometimes getting a bit more accurate with graph paper. And when you think all is good, drawing a clean final version with a medium tipped black marker.

kind of basic

Although you can use tracing paper for your pattern pieces, I prefer freezer paper. You can trace onto it. And then you can iron the pieces onto your fabric for accurate and easy cutting. You can even copy onto it. Amazon sells sheets that go through your copier, which allows for easy replicating, enlarging and reducing. You can also just get a roll at the grocery store for a lot less money.

luxury items

Coming in the next few days...the base dress pattern pieces for a variety of dolls. Adobe illustrator and I are becoming friends (sort of) as I try to create these.

A Basic Course in Doll Dress-Making

Thinking about starting to sew doll clothes?

Already sew doll clothes but would like to learn a few techniques?

Have a few doll clothes patterns but would like to have more?

Have a doll you'd like to sew for but do not have a pattern?

Through a series of blog posts, I am going show you how to make a few doll dress patterns and walk you through a number of doll clothing sewing techniques that I use.

We will start with making a base pattern to work off of.  I will provide a base pattern for the following dolls:

Phoebe (of course)

Toddler Phoebe (of course again)

American Girl Doll

A Standard 16" Waldorf Doll

A Sasha Doll

I will then help you resize to fit your doll.

And then once we all have base dresses, I will teach you how to use that base to create a lot of other dress patterns. Along the way, as we sew the dresses, I will show you a few basic doll dress making techniques. Nothing fancy, but enough so you can make a number of kinds of dresses.

Are you ready? By the end of the week, I should have the base patterns ready to go. I'm still an Adobe Illustrator novice, but I'm getting better at the pattern tracing.

The Ups and Downs of Prototyping

Almost every doll and softie maker has been there. It starts with an image, imagined or inspired from something real. An image of something that does not exist yet—maybe a doll, an animal, a doll dress. It has to be designed and a pattern has to be created. A process that involves lots of paper, lots of cloth and sometimes a copier for scaling. The pattern is necessary because this image rarely becomes your vision on the first try and you will need a starting point from which to tweak. 

So you tweak, and you tweak, and you tweak. You produce iteration after iteration. What propels you is that you have now invested serious time and materials and you imagine that you are creeping closer. Sometimes you are. You turn that last iteration right side out and have hit that eureka moment, when your vision has become real. You are holding your vision in your hands.. It was time well-spent. You gather your pattern pieces, because you will be sewing this again and again. Yay! Life is good.

But this is not always the prototyping path. It is not always a happy ending. Sometimes the ending is a dead-end. At some point, reality hits you and you start to realize, maybe this is not a wise investment. You reluctantly cut your losses.

When this happens, as it did to me this week-end, I need to realize this dead-end was also a worthy investment. An experiment that had to be explored. I wouldn't have known what could not be done until until I tried. And inevitably, when this happens, and it has more than once,  I learn something new about sewing, or the materials, or pattern-making, or my psyche.

But first I'm in a bit of a funk, feeling like I wasted a lot of time. I throw away all the pieces, clean my studio, strip it of the evidence, so when i start tomorrow, I can think about what is ahead and not lament.

I tried to make a floppy toddler doll. I thought it would be sweet, but I could not get the felt to cooperate at that scale. I did make at least a half dozen iterations of a floppy toddler doll, each a tweak better than the last, but none were good enough to leave my house.

And I did get something out of it—this blog post. I would love to hear the ups and downs of prototyping from the rest of you makers out there. Misery loves company.

DIY Knitted Babes Kit: Easy to Do and Easy to Win

The dolls in the "Knitted Babes" book are so easy and fun to make, you will soon be addicted, which is fine, because there are enough materials in this kit to make at least four. 

The book "Knitted Babes--Five Dolls and Their Wardrobes" by Claire Garland (see my interview in the earlier post), amazing photos and easy instructions

• Two skeins of skin colored of Merino Yarn
• Two skeins of hair yarn (blond and black
• Felt for Eyes
• Floss for their eyelashes (important)
• Four fresh fun fabrics like the ones in the book
• Two cotton yarns for knitted clothing
• Three fun trims

How to Win?

Comment under this post before January 30, 2014. I'll pick a comment from the random number generator. I need to know how to contact you, you can contact me privately.

And if you win, this will be coming your way, soon in the mail.

The book and materials for the babes clothes.

Hair, eyelashes, skin and eyes.

Two of my Knitted Babes.