Chat n Snap 2025

The tenth and final Chat 'n Snap was organised by Dee and her family, with the wonderful creations of her husband Paul taking centre stage. Paul built 8 different playground equipment items for Dee's 1970s playground and all attendees were invited to place one doll in the scene. 

Paul had built the following: a climbing frame, slide, box roundabout which really went round, a swinging rocking horse, a set of swings, a single swing, a witches hat and a see saw! All incredible for a display which was only up for a few hours. It deserves another showing somewhere.

I wish I'd sneaked my toddler Louisa onto the swings, as there was a spare swing. We decided that our two contributions to the scene would be my daughter's 2024 Sasha festival raffle win Archie and the girl I purchased at the 2024 Sasha Festival whom I called Katie after Rosie Shortell's daughter. Both of them wanted to try out the tall slide (that style of tall slide wouldn't pass modern health and safety standards but I recall many times using such a slide in the parks of Pinelands in Cape Town where I grew up).

Katie wore her Sasha logo dress (I think by JoAnn Staricha) and Sasha logo sandals by Monica Jarpey. Archie wore one of his two Catherine French sweaters and long tan trousers and boots (part of his extensive wardrobe of clothes from the raffle). He enjoyed the thrill of the slide with his arms in the air! 

Archie enjoys the slide

Hopscotch in the foreground while Katie looks up at the slide

Swinging rocking horse, swings and see saw

Swinging rocking horse, skateboarder and Sasha with her baby doll and pushchair

Toddlers on the swings

Skipping plus the swings and swinging rocking horse

The witches hat

Another view of the witches hat

The box roundabout

Hoola hooping and hopscotch and slide

Chilling on the box roundabout

Climbing frame, slide, box roundabout and witches hat

Witches hat with swings in the background

Quite a crowd of children enjoying this playground

Crawling along the top of the climbing frame

Climbing frame, slide and box roundabout

Playing conkers by the slide

At the other end of the hall, on a doll display table, I placed Trudi on her chair, Edmund, Louisa, baby Nina surrounded her while my daughter carefully adjusted the hairstyles for Laura, Miranda and Aurelia.

Laura and Miranda wore their 2024 Sasha Festival souvenir smocked dresses by Petrana for the first time (we hadn't unboxed them until Thursday evening). Aurelia had gone fully punk, including safety pins on her clothes and spikes in her hair. Edmund and Trudi were in their sailor outfits, Louisa wore a play dress by Lynne Field and Sasha logo sandals by Monica Jarpey. Nina wore the gorgeous little outfit Tricia had given my daughter as a table gift at the 2024 Sasha Festival.

L-R: Aurelia, Laura, Miranda, Edmund, Trudi, Nina and Louisa

Others in the doll display including some autumnal themed outfits

Babies in the foreground of the doll display table

Doll display in front of the St Ippolyts sign

Some lovely no philtrum dolls sitting in front of the doll display

Alice's dolls stood beside our dolls with the no philtrum dolls in the foreground

There were plenty of sales tables and we weren't allowed to purchase anything until Dee announced that sales were open. I was delighted to buy a book I have long sought - Sasha Puppen.

Sales tables

Sales tables

Sales tables

The raffle was epic as always - loads of prizes. We didn't win anything for a while, then after Sue M gave us one of her winning tickets (thank you Sue), we did win 3 on our tickets

Raffle time

Dawn and Dee in charge of drawing the raffle

Of course there was lots of chatting with old and new friends throughout the day and it really was over all too quickly - I certainly didn't get to speak to everyone I knew or all the first time to the Chat 'n Snap people.

Thank you Dee, Paul and all your helpers for such a fun day, Dmd and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

L-R: Aurelia, Katie, Louisa, Miranda, Nina, Trudi, Edmund, Laura and Archie the night before the Chat 'n Snap

Trudi the sailor girl

My elder daughter recently sorted through her wardrobe when moving flat and gave me some of her old shirts she no longer wanted. Most of them went to Oxfam but I kept two of them because the fabric inspired me to sew a new outfit for Trudi, my Sasha studio doll. This conveniently coincided with Janet selling some Studio doll sized vintage patterns and one of them was for a sailor outfit, though with bloomers rather than a skirt.

I realised Trudi would need shoes to go with her outfit. So far she had her original summer farm girl boots and a pair of brown sandals made by Lisa. A search online resulted in me finding a shoemaker based in Ukraine who made serie Sasha sized shoes in some lovely styles in real leather, she also makes other sizes so after corresponding with her we decided the shoes she makes for Ardyn/Masha Meadow dolls would fit Trudi, with a little bit of space at the toes, so room for her socks. I bought two different styles, one pair of white shoes and one pair of royal blue shoes, plus a pair of red shoes for our serie Sasha dolls.

I made a few adjustments to the pattern as I soon realised that the pop over sailor top would have to go over Trudi's head and I didn't want to struggle with getting it over her head. So I split the back of the top and added button fastening. It meant the sailor collar had to be detachable, which ultimately I did with snap fasteners at the front.

I made a white skirt with pleats at the front and gathers at the back to go with the top, using the same fabric as I used for the collar and cuffs, which were trimmed with royal blue ribbon. The skirt pattern was also in the collection of patterns from Janet, though it wasn't originally designed to have pleats, they were easy to add.

Trudi already had the socks I had knitted previously. I made her plain white combinations from the patterns Janet had sent as the white combinations from the Sasha Celebration weekend would have shown round the neck of the top, which I wanted to avoid.

Edmund was inspired to change back into his original Gotz Sailor outfit to join Trudi in her nautical theme. I think she has an air of the youngest child in the film of The Sound of Music, though the outfit is not a direct copy of any of those film costumes.

Trudi the sailor girl

Back view of Trudi's sailor outfit, showing the collar

Trudi and Edmund the Sasha sailors!