Sasha Festival 2024 Day 2 - Dress a Sasha set up plus dinner guest speaker and souvenirs

After the Children's Fund Auction had finished and the tables which had displayed those items were cleared, the Dress a Sasha entrants were able to set up our displays. We brought our display items (rather large) down to the room using the trolley I normally use for our boxes of street organ music (it is a fabulous multi-purpose trolley which can also be a sack barrow).

There were five categories in action for the 2 themes. Sadly there were no children at this year's festival, and only one teenager, who entered the English Garden assembled by Teenager category on her own. 

The two themes were English Garden and Afternoon tea, with Assembled by or Crafted being the additional elements to split into categories as follows:

English Garden - Assembled by Adult

English Garden - Crafted by Adult

Afternoon Tea - Assembled by Adult

Afternoon Tea - Crafted by Adult

Crafted means all the clothing apart from shoes/socks have to be made by the entrant. 

Assembled by means all the clothing is made by others and the ensemble is assembled by the entrant.

Now that my younger daughter is no longer a teenager, we both entered the English Garden Crafted by Adult. This meant we were competing with each other, however in the months leading up to the festival, we bounced ideas and encouraged each other, it never felt like a competition in our home and I was extremely proud of what my daughter created, especially as she learned so much sewing technique along the way.

I have blogged about what we created in two separate posts: Dress a Sasha created by DollMum's daughter and Dress a Sasha created by DollMum.

Because some people turned up a bit later than others to set up and I wasn't aware of a list of entrants (apparently 18 but only 15 arrived), not all the entries were grouped together in their categories and there was some confusion when a couple of descriptions were hand written on the wrong colour card for the category being entered (we had prepared and printed our descriptions in advance, so did not have that problem). Also there were some entries where the two themes were blended by the entrant and were labelled for one theme, though people might have interpreted them as being in the other theme. For future festivals, to avoid this confusion, I suggest having a printed list of entries in advance so the organiser knows exactly how much table space to allow for each category and each entrant knows in advance what their entrant number will be. If there is ever a Sasha Festival in the UK again and I can attend, please may I organise the Dress a Sasha competition before the festival commences.

Our photos in this post are our Dress a Sasha entries once set up. Photos of the other Dress a Sasha entries will be in a day 3 post, as we were not able to take photos of them until the following morning.

Fair Rosamund and The Secret Garden in the 'English Garden created by Adult' category

DollMum's daughter: Fair Rosamund and DollMum: The Secret Garden 

Fair Rosamund in her garden

Fair Rosamund from the side

Close up of Fair Rosamund's bodice lacing and embroidered waistband

Fair Rosamund in her garden, side view

The Secret Garden

Mary in The Secret Garden

Dickon and Colin in The Secret Garden

Colin tends his tulips in The Secret Garden

Robin, spade, roses, fox and tulips

Fox in the garden

Robin on the spade

Friday evening was dinner together in the conference room, some of us dressed up a bit for the evening. This was the first of the two occasions when we had table hostesses for each table. My daughter and I ended up on a table of 'spares' with no hostess because some people have guests so there is spillage of festival attendees on an additional table, but plenty of hostess gifts, so each of us received a different gift from different table hostesses, which was fun. I was thrilled to receive a gift from JoAnn (a gorgeous little tote bag containing a Peanuts book, a pair of Minnesota shorts with canoes on it and a lovely little white hat) and my daughter received a lovely Sasha logo dress made by Laura O.

Trendon Elliott and Melanie came to dinner on Friday evening

After dinner, we had a guest speaker, none other than John Doggart (son of Sara and John Doggart who owned the Trendon doll factory), who presented a fascinating talk with slides about the innovations which had lead to the factory production of the English Sasha doll. The Doggart family and its ancestral branches had clearly been a family of innovators/inventors/engineers and creatives, no wonder the Trendon dolls are so wonderfully crafted. He was also able to show how there was a Milton Keynes connection in the Doggart family story (John is a retired architect and had worked on some of the innovative buildings in the new town of Milton Keynes, he mentioned that Sasha Morgenthaler had visited Milton Keynes). He also explained that John and Sara had first become aware of Sasha dolls via the Graphis magazine, then the Lindt chocolate wrappers.

Friday evening dinner our table

Friday evening dinner

Friday evening dinner

Friday evening dinner

Smiles for the camera at the Friday evening dinner

John Doggart's talk about Sasha and the Innovators

John Doggart introduces Sasha and the Innovators

John Doggart mentions Bletchley Park

John references Milton Keynes innovations

Innovative architecture in Milton Keynes

John and Sara Doggart

Close knit and supportive family of innovators

Friedland contribution to an essential part in the Spitfire

Graphis magazine

Graphis article about Sasha

Graphis note about good toy manufacture

Technical diagram of innovative head mould for vinyl dolls

Sara Doggart and 
Brenda Walton with a Sasha doll

Geoff Lawton, one of the Trendon innovators

Sasha Morgenthaler gave young Jason Lawton a teddy bear called Pad when she visited the Trendon factory and worked with Jason's father Geoff.

Graphis description of the humanity of Sasha dolls

After John Doggart's fascinating talk, Petrana told us we could open our Festival souvenir boxes. There were lots of gasps of delight when we did because Petrana had made beautiful smocked dresses for each of us, with different fabric, so no two dresses were the same, with matching shoes and underwear. Thank you Petrana, we are delighted with our souvenir outfits. My daughter was very pleased to get a dress which goes well with black shoes, and I'm very happy with the gorgeous pale blue and white pattern and white shoes for my outfit.

My festival souvenir outfit box

My festival souvenir outfit by Petrana - wow!

My daughter's festival souvenir outfit by Petrana - just what she likes

Trudi my C1 Studio doll sits on our table after we had wrapped up our festival souvenirs again

It had been a very long, busy and interesting day at the 2024 Sasha Doll festival.