Dolly Jolly 2022 part 1

The long awaited Dolly Jolly had arrived and we started driving north as soon as my daughter got out of school early. Despite the heavy traffic we made it to Darlington by 6:30pm so were in time for dinner at 7:00pm with the others who were attending - private dining in a large room with the windows open.

The first evening dinner included the raffle. I brought in the picnic prize I had made which Janet decided would be the final raffle ticket of the evening.

Raffle prizes including the picnic hamper, picnic rug and Easter bonnet outfit I had contributed

Raffle prizes galore!

We all admired the other prize table, displaying the prizes for the Dolly Bingo for the second evening, a tantalising array of top prizes.

The Dolly Bingo prizes table

Most people had brought one or more doll to dinner and after we had eaten I went round the table taking photos of the dolls. We brought Laura and Florence to dinner with us.

Florence in her Windmill 'Ted Menton' pinafore dress
and Laura in an outfit by Lorraine Tyler and a Dollydoodles hoodie

Dolls at dinner

Harry Potter with Hedwig and Dobby

A little sweetie with her toy dog and bear

Two little Helen Kish dolls

Three doll friends

A Gotz Sasha with a Dionne Quintuplet

A glorious rag doll, very huggable

Two beautiful Sasha girls

A Zwergnase girl having a glass of wine!

We bought several strips of raffle tickets and were amazed to win 12 lovely prizes (I haven't taken photos of them yet). Thank you to all those who donated prizes, everyone attending won more than one prize. It was such a fun evening and so good to catch up with previous doll friends plus meet some new doll friends.

The following morning Teddy, Alice and I went shopping for our contributions to the picnic which I had organised for that day. It was a glorious spring morning, so we were hopeful the picnic would not be rained on. 

Tricia had coordinated the room hopping - this involved those who had dolls they wanted to display putting them on show in their hotel rooms, each of us being given the list of room numbers plus the times they were open. There were 5 rooms in the morning session and 5 in the afternoon session. My daughter and I did not have a room display because she was revising for her examinations in our room, so I visited the morning rooms after returning from picnic grocery shopping. My photos only indicate the order I visited the rooms, I am not labelling these to indicate ownership of any of the dolls and scenes depicted.

Sasha Bakery in Room 1

Sasha Bakery in Room 1

Sasha Bakery in Room 1

Sindy room in Room 1

Sindy room in Room 1

Lenci doll in Room 1

Sasha dolls and friends in Room 1

A mixed collection of dolls (including Sasha, Maggie Iacono, Lati Yellow, Topper Dawn, Schoenhut, Pongratz, Ruby Red and Ten Ping) in Room 2

Some Sasha and Gregor dolls in Room 3

A Roddy doll with Roddy and Rosebud friends in Room 3

Some Sasha dolls in Room 4

Trendon Sasha sisters joined by their Gotz Sasha sister in Room 4

Close up of a Sasha in Room 4

Sasha, Lenci, Frozen Charlotte and the Dionne Quintuplet in Room 4

The Dionne Quintuplet in Room 4

A mixed collection of dolls (including Pippa, Jakks Pacific, Helen Kish, Ball jointed dolls, Xenis, Rainbow High) in Room 5

Some of the dolls in Room 5

Rag dolls, Rainbow High, Chrissie and others in Room 5

Ball jointed doll in Room 5

Two restored dolls in Room 5

Then it was picnic time! 

Raffle prize for the Dolly Jolly

In preparation for the Dolly Jolly event which Janet has organised in May, I've been doing some sewing recently, using fabric I won on the raffle at a Sasha Celebration Weekend a few years ago: a pile of patterned fat quarters in shades of blue and yellow, plus some plain fabric. One piece of floral fabric was used to make an Easter bonnet with a matching outfit (including using the Ted Menton pinafore dress pattern), in the challenge posed by Gael S in one of the Sasha Facebook groups. I finished the bonnet and the outfit just in time for Easter day. We were in York for the whole weekend, so the photos I took of Florence with her Easter treats were in the little patio garden of the AirBnB we were staying in at the time. 

Florence models the Easter bonnet picnic outfit on Easter Day in York

The Easter bonnet trimmed with white roses, miniature buttons and ribbon

The Easter bonnet fabric is a delicate floral pattern in blues and yellows with a touch of green

The Easter bonnet tied under her chin with yellow ribbon

The Easter bonnet / picnic outfit includes a sleeveless shirt, knickers, Ted Menton pinafore dress and the Easter bonnet

The other part of the sewing I hadn't quite finished before we drove to York on Maundy Thursday, and required my sewing machine plus the iron, so I left it at home to finish when I returned. It is a double sided Sasha doll sized picnic rug.

The Dolly Jolly picnic rug side A

The Dolly Jolly picnic rug side B

The food pattern fabric used as the centre piece on each side was quite a large piece of Mary Engelbreit fabric which I had bought a few years ago, three patterns of which I used to make a dress for my younger daughter when she was 10. It seemed right to use this fourth piece in a picnic rug. 

I had been gathering items for this raffle prize for a few weeks - two hamper baskets, the miniature tea set, the Sasha sized tumbling tower blocks and I raided our Sasha toy collection for the remaining items of fun games to play on a picnic (frisbee, bat and ball, foam football). The larger hamper basket had no lining, so I lined it with some of the food pattern fabric, the smaller basket had red and white check lining but I ripped that out and replaced it with pale blue and white check lining instead, to match the picnic rug.

The mini picnic hamper containing the tea set and mugs in their boxes

The mini picnic hamper containing the tea set (sellotape still on the tea pot lid) and mugs

The lined larger hamper basket containing the picnic games and the mini picnic hamper

Florence, her shoes and socks are NOT included in the raffle prize. 

Everything in the raffle prize fits neatly inside the larger basket. This will be a special raffle prize at the Dolly Jolly event during May 2022 (in England).

Florence wearing the Easter bonnet outfit,
with the picnic rug, tea set in its mini hamper,
picnic games and the lined hamper basket to carry the prizes.

Horrible velcro again

Anna in her new Gotz dress

This morning my younger daughter wanted to change my Anna doll into party clothes, and we realised that Anna's own wardrobe consisted of her original outfit with the lovely suede boots, a skirt and the navy party dress I had made, her ice skating dress and silver skates, but no party shoes - she had borrowed black boots from one of the other dolls at Christmas for the party dress photo. So I decided to give her a present which had been hidden away since I had bought some of the 2009 catalogue clothes earlier this year for my girls dolls. This was the only item still not brought out from that secret stash of clothes and I had always intended it for the Anna doll.

It is a lovely silvery dress with red and white patterned rouched skirt, matching silver shoes and handbag. However after putting the dress on, my daughter decided the other party dress had to go on first for a dance before this new dress could be worn for a picnic, so off came the dress again. However the long velcro strip down the back kept catching the inside of the dress, and in taking it off, the top of the dress was damaged on either side (and I was being careful).

Both sides of the back of the dress were damaged when removing
the dress for the first time - all because of the velcro

I also noticed that the little handbag was vastened with velcro, but the tabs didn't line up well, and the bag was closing in a distorted fashion, and the flap was gaping badly. Additionally, the velcro was catching on the silver threads in the material.

The not properly closing handbag and
the badly position velcro which caused the problem

I was really disappointed and annoyed about this - nasty velcro once again was causing problems for the clothes, resulting in destruction.

There was only one solution, and I acted immediately. Out came needle and silver thread (rather stiff stuff to use for sewing) and I used careful blanket stitches to repair the damaged dress. Later in the evening I sewed press studs (silver rather than black) on the handbag and removed both strips of velcro so the bag now closes properly and I've pulled the slight natural distortion straight again.

The little handbag with press studs, without velcro

In the afternoon three of the dolls joined my young daughter for a picnic tea party in her bedroom. Samantha was dressed for ballet, Jayne was dressed in some of Samantha's original skating outfit and Anna came in her new party dress.

Picnic tea party

The ruched skirt is kept in place by a white band stitched on the inside of the skirt which makes the skirt narrower than it looks, so this meant getting her to sit could only be done by pulling the skirt up a bit. But despite this annoyance, and the irritation of having to do repairs and adjustments to a new bought outfit, it is still a lovely dress, shoes and bag set.