Welcome Ideal Toni and new outfits for Toni and Trudi

In October I popped into a local vintage shop in the town where I live and while browsing around found a 14" (P90) Ideal Toni doll languishing on a chair in the back room (these dolls are hard plastic, made 1949-1952 in the USA). Her non original knitted outfit was moth eaten and very incomplete as a result, however she still had her original white plastic shoes and her hairstyle was still in the original style though somewhat dusty. She had no price tag and when I asked about her the shop owner said she was still getting her priced up with the help of a friend so I had to wait a couple of weeks before I could purchase her in early November.

Toni in her moth eaten knitted dress

Toni with her hairstyle largely intact

Toni full face

Toni's wig from above

Side view of Toni's hair style

Other side view of Toni's wig

Then she had to wait because it was Christmas time and I had other doll projects on the go and was finishing off the goth Christmas sweater for my daughter. However, when I purchased Toni, I removed her outfit, put it in a ziplock bag in the freezer just in case there were any moth eggs (I had half a mind to find the knitting pattern and knit it again). I washed her carefully, but at the time didn't wash her hair. I dressed her in a floral lilac Sasha dress and underwear which had been adopted by Betsy, my Schoenhut doll, but it was a bit baggy for her as she has a slimmer waist than 16" Sasha and Betsy.

Making her wait also helped me work out what outfit to make for her and once I was making it I decided to carefully wash her hair and keep the style (it was easy as she had factory curl and a hairpin on one side).

I think it was at the Dolly Jolly in 2021 that I'd won a raffle prize of a fat quarter of fabric mustard yellow floral fabric, with a ball of variegated purple to green colour wool and a pack of various different purple, lilac and pink buttons. I had thought of making an outfit for Trudi my Studio doll with that combination, but I realised Toni's colouring of auburn hair and green eyes match that combination of colours too.

In January, after the doll literary display was set up in the library, I found time to design and make Toni's outfit. I adapted a Sasha dress pattern - a lined fitted bodice with circular skirt, a knitted short sleeved cardigan (my favourite top down seamless raglan pattern by Lauri Bolland), fine knitted ankle socks using 1 ply wool and size 19 knitting needles (adapting a Sasha socks pattern to fit her slim feet). The circle of fabric from the centre of the circular skirt became to top of a beret style hat (I put elastic in the bottom so it would hold her her head). I made her a pair of white jersey panties. I knitted a little handbag to complete the outfit.

Toni shows off her complete new outfit

Closer view of Toni's cardigan and knitted handbag

Close up of Toni's hat on her clean hair

Close up of Toni's ankle socks

I took her back to the shop last week to show the owner and she was excited to see what I had created, and took a photo to send to her friend.

Ever since they got home from being in the library Christmas display, Miranda and Louisa have been standing on the table downstairs with little Gigi Ruby Red Galleria doll and Bouncer the dog. Soon Toni joined them in her new outfit. 

Yesterday I took down the doll display in the library (just after I did another parent asked library staff about the literary treasure trail and display, the word had got out and it was popular apparently, the Library Manager and I have already started bouncing ideas for next year's Literary treasure trail and display). Today, with actual sunshine outside lighting up our sitting room, it was doll photography time.

Miranda wearing her white knitted dress, Toni in her new outfit and Louisa in her Christmas sundress

Today a dress I commissioned at the Chat 'n Snap arrived in the post from Tricia - perfect timing for sunshine and doll photography. So Trudi came downstairs and changed out of her sailor outfit into the gorgeous dress of Liberty fabric with its bespoke embroidered felt bodice. It absolutely suits her colouring. Tricia had used her own Studio doll Dani to get the sizing right, now Dani is asking for a similar dress.

Trudi wearing her beautiful bespoke embroidered dress

Trudi in her embroidered dress

Close up showing the embroidery

Back view of the bodice showing the buttons and button loops

Betsy normally sits in the doll display cabinet in a rocking chair, wearing her dress made by Tricia. I brought her downstairs to compare the two dresses, same style, so very different due to fabric and embroidery.

Betsy and Trudi in their 'Tricia Jackson' embroidered dresses

L-R: Gigi (Ruby Red Galleria), Toni (Ideal), Bouncer the dog, Betsy, Trudi, Miranda and Louisa

The only commercially made dress in this photo is Gigi's dress, all the others were either made by me or by Tricia.

Four different makes of dolls. They're all so different and beautiful in their own ways. 

Sasha display for StonyWords 2026

In January 2025 I was permitted to use the display cabinet in our local library for a few weeks during the annual literary festival when I shared the Dress a Sasha displays from the 2024 and 2012 festivals. I combined the display with a literary treasure trail within the library for children as part of the literary festival which helps our town brighten up a dark month in the depths of the English winter. See Sasha Exhibition for the local library

This January, in collaboration with the literary festival organisers, the library staff, the town council and the local gardening group Stony in Bloom (who usually display their trophies in it), once again I am using the display cabinet for the literary festival. I swapped out the Christmas display a couple of weeks ago and set up displays with the following themes: traditional party games and a beloved fairy story.

The 2026 literary festival display

The traditional party games display features two games:

Game 1: Pin the tail on the donkey with Eeyore as the donkey, featuring my younger daughter's 2017 Dress a Sasha entry when we attended the Sasha Doll Festival in Washington DC. As it happens, this ties in nicely in 2026 with centenary of Winnie-the-Pooh coming into print (the first short story was printed in a newspaper 24 December 1925 and the book Winnie-the-Pooh was published in 1926). The clothes Laura, Edmund and baby Amy were wearing featured Winnie-the-Pooh characters redrawn from Ernest Shepard's designs by my younger daughter then printed on fabric by my sister's company. I was able to draw upon this for the literary treasure trail clues. 

Game 2: all our babies playing Pass the Parcel, with crumpled wrapping paper and general merriment.

The beloved fairy story was chosen by the library manager - she challenged me to the Elves and the Shoemaker. I had grown up with the 1965 Ladybird book version of this story with wonderful painted illustrations which brilliantly tell the story. So of course I wanted to recreate those illustrations using a pair of Gregor dolls by Sasha Morgenthaler. 

Recreating that scene on the front cover of The Elves and the Shoemaker meant finding a suitable pair of shoes which would approximate the style and colours of the shoes in the picture. I looked online and of course couldn't find anything suitable which I could just buy and not adapt. I went to our local cobbler and key cutting shop (yes, in this day and age we really do have a cobbler in our town who do shoe repairs - they're fantastic) and asked if they had anything but they don't make shoes, however they suggested finding a good condition pair in a charity shop and painting them. They also kindly consented to loan me a pair of vintage shoe lasts to include in the display (one was painted in bright stripes). So I scoured the local charity shops (the town has several) and found a pair of pumps which needed their heels building up higher but were roughly the right design and set to work on them.

I built up the heels with 3 layers of thick card cut to shape.

Then I started painting the shoes using acrylic paint.

The heels built up with thick cardboard glued on, and starting to paint

Starting to paint the green

I had to paint inside the shoes too plus hide the shoe size on the soles to make them less modern. For the heel which was to have the nail, I painted nail heads and used a real panel pin for the nail being hammered in. For the shoe having its yellow braid stitched on, I used thick thread stitched from inside the shoe to the outside, then threaded a large darning needle onto it for the elf to hold.

Close up of the elves hammering and sewing the shoes

I made the outfits for the elves from scratch. I found fabric in my stash which had the right rustic look and was reasonably close in colour to those pictured (for one elf I didn't have a washed out yellow so I used a cream colour instead). I had to make their clothes look ragged, so didn't need to sew any edging seams and snipped jagged edges all the neck, arm and bottom edges of their tops and the bottom of their shorts to allow a bit of fraying. The lighter colour top has two patches sewn on the back and a hole in the shoulder to roughly copy the illustration.

I knitted pointy caps for the elves then made ears (modelled over their real ears) from Milliput which I painted after it had dried then glued them on temporarily using tacky glue (it won't harm their vinyl ears, it was only a spot for each of them). 

close up of elf ear worn by Trendon Elliott

close up of elf ear worn by Nicholas James

Trendon Elliott sewing the braid on the shoe

I had painted the handle of the hammer to look like wood (it is an Our Generation doll hammer) and made a miniature pointer from the leftover blob of Milliput with a needle pushed into it, then painted when dry. 

the miniature pointer

I also made the candle holder and candlestick (from metal button and painted Milliput) and put this on a stump of wood (I didn't have time to make a three legged stool as depicted in the illustration). The flame on the candle was made from clippings of tinsel, my elder daughter says it looks like it is about to explode!

The candle and candle stick on the stump of wood

Setting up the display in the cabinet took about 90 minutes. Four of the dolls were in the Christmas display (Laura, Edmund, Davy and Nina) and needed to be in the Pin the tail on the donkey display, so they had a quick change of clothes at the library. The other four dolls from the Christmas display came home with me.

I set up the two party games first on the higher shelf which is where I already had the Stony in Bloom bunting from the Christmas display (I took down the Christmas bunting). I put up the Happy Birthday banner my younger daughter had made for her 2017 Dress a Sasha entry. The shelf looked quite crowded once I'd finished the party display as every one of our babies were included, though baby Amy is in the Pin the tail game while all the others are playing Pass the parcel.

Pass the Parcel being eagerly played by 9 Sasha babies

Mabel, Leo and Daisy playing Pass the Parcel

Theo with a book while playing Pass the parcel beside babies Nina and Davy (who had a quick change after the Christmas display)

L-R: Nomalizo, Ebony, Robin, Mabel, Leo and Daisy playing Pass the Parcel

Pin the tail on the donkey

Back view of baby Amy playing with her rattle and books

Laura guiding Edmund as he tries to pin the tail on Eeyore

Edmund wearing his Eeyore shirt and the blindfold while holding the tail

In her 2017 Dress a Sasha entry, my daughter had used a vintage book just below the birthday banner. One of the library staff suggested that the pop-up book about Eeyore's tail needed to be open and I couldn't put it under the birthday banner in the display cabinet because it wouldn't be seen. So I put it a space at the front corner of the cabinet which was not being used by either game and opened it to show Christopher Robin pinning the tail back onto Eeyore while Winnie-the-Pooh and Piglet watch. 

The pop-up book open for the pin the tail scene

Christopher Robin pins the tail back on Eeyore while Winnie-the-Pooh and Piglet watch

Then I concentrated on the Elves and the Shoemaker. I had raided our workshop for some leather pieces of various colours and thickness which are piled up behind the elves and raided my collection of vintage wooden cotton reels for two piles of thread, also our shoe polish box for some shoe polish brushes. The vintage wooden lasts on loan from the cobblers Kingsman Gentleman Cobblers were placed beside the elves hard at work. I pegged open the Ladybird book to the page showing the elves making the shoes and had copies of that picture and the book stuck on display cabinet, so at least the shoemaker and his wife could be seen peeping through the curtains at the busy elves. Ideally I would have painted a larger backdrop on a board featuring the shoemaker and his wife but didn't have the time beforehand to make this and also there were Stony in Bloom trophies at the back of the glass shelf which I didn't want to hide.

Nicholas James being an Elf with a hammer while Trendon Elliott is the elf with the needle and thread

The Elves and the Shoemaker display, showing the pointer in the foreground

The Elves and the Shoemaker display including the vintage lasts on loan from Kingsman Gentlemen Cobblers

The Elves and the Shoemaker display

On the wall beside the display cabinet I put up information about the displays.

The treasure trail was cards of simple clues stuck up around the downstairs walls and windows in the library (the children's section), with instructions to go upstairs to see the display when they had finished the trail downstairs. It was simpler and shorter than last year (which was too wordy for very young readers) and the Library manager was delighted with how it flowed, showing the link between traditional party games and the fairy story (an underlying theme of giving and receiving). Apparently families are enjoying it. Each returned answer sheet results in the participant receiving a shoe or boot template I put together which they can use to design a shoe or boot, I believe the library staff are encouraging them to return these for a display in the library.

I had plenty of fun devising and putting together this display and the treasure trail.

Goth themed Christmas sweater

In August 2024 my elder daughter and I co-designed a Goth Christmas sweater for her. She chose many of the elements she wanted me to include, found possible images to adapt (some from other knitwear, some from cross stitch designs) and in some cases drew what she wanted for me to chart up. I used the basic knitting pattern of a vintage sweater my mother had worn in the 1960s, which I still own. I had found the pattern online after sharing a photo of my mother's sweater in knitwear groups. It is called Norwegian Sportswear by P&B.

Vintage knitting pattern Norwegian Sportswear by P&B

My mother wearing the sweater my godmother's mum knitted for her (with me, my sister and my grandfather, in 1978)

I charted up the whole sweater using an Excel spreadsheet with tiny grid squares coloured with the different elements. For the raglan join, my daughter wanted a spider web (inspired by a vintage knit pattern she found online) and bats, so I carefully charted all the spiderweb lines to match up, and ensured the actual seams were not on the vertical white lines of the web. 

I started knitting the front in August 2024 and completed the front and back plus the first part of a sleeve. By mid December it was clear I would not have the sweater finished in time for that Christmas and was busy with many other pre-Christmas activities so didn't have enough time to devote to it.

The most tedious elements to knit were the ghosts and candlesticks, I didn't mind the skellies and haunted reindeer (my names for those elements). Knitting with predominantly black yarn was not my favourite as counting rows is harder with black yarn, I was glad that during 2025 I bought a magnifier lamp for cross stitching a stole for my niece's wedding in South Africa, as this helped with knitting the sleeves from October 2025 when I resumed this project. I finished it in the early hours of Christmas morning so my daughter was able to wear it on Christmas day 2025, much to her delight. 

The yarn used is Sirdar Country Classic 50g 4ply balls in black, grey, white and red. It is 50% wool, 50% acrylic blend and I would say is bordering on not the best choice for stranded knitting because there isn't enough wool to make the yarn 'stick' better, so in some places despite my best efforts, the short floats show through. To keep the floats tidy and reduce the chance of them catching when putting on the sweater, I mostly stranded every 2 stitches, which meant frequent untwisting of the balls of yarn until I invested in a yarn holding gadget which helped manage the untwisting of colours somewhat. It was a trade off using this blend to quell concerns about wearing wool next to sensitive skin (my daughter would never wear a pure wool sweater such as my Guernsey). This yarn was not bad for knitting generally, but not so good for stranded knitting in my opinion (a 60% wool, 40% acrylic blend might have been stickier).

back of a sleeve while in progress, showing the floats

We washed the sweater a few days after Christmas on a 15 minute 20 degrees C cycle as I was concerned about colour running and pounding the sweater too much, in the event this softened it a bit without colour running which was a relief.

The front of the sweater with the collar rolled down

closer view of the front with the collar up

The back of the sweater with the collar up

My daughter is delighted with the Goth Christmas sweater. I think it will get worn from Halloween onwards every winter! She is proud of it being one of a kind, so although she suggested I could sell the pattern via Ravelry, she is also revelling in admiring comments from friends who appreciate its uniqueness.

I might reuse one or two elements (most likely the skellies, which were from a cross stitch pattern, and haunted reindeer, which my daughter drew) as single motifs for Sasha doll knitwear. I will not knit another ghost! I have refused to take commissions and knit the whole combination again as it was very time consuming to make.