We would love to hear from you.
Making a doll
Do you want to help us? You are very welcome…
Making a doll
If you want to help with making dolls please follow the steps below.
You can send me a message on the ‘contact us’ page if you need to clarify something.
Please let us know when your dolls are ready so we can collect them.
What you will need
- A sheet of A4 paper
- Scissors
- Pen
- Any white or light cream fabric preferably cotton. Could be from old clothes.
- Pins ( if necessary)
- Tacking (basting) thread (if necessary).
- Needle
- Red thread
- Any reddish fabric preferably cotton.
- Stuffing from an old pillow .
How to make the doll
- Download and print the doll pattern and cut it out.
- Draw round the pattern on a doubled piece of fabric.
- Pin (if necessary) the two layers of fabric together and cut out the doll shapes.
- Sew the two shapes together with large tacking (basting) stitches, just to hold the doubled fabric together (if necessary).
- Sew round edges with red thread. Leave an opening of around 3cm preferably on the inside of one leg to insert the stuffing.
- Turn inside out. You will need the help of something long and thin – perhaps your pen
- Insert the stuffing.It is best to start with the head and arms and to push the stuffing to the ends so they will be firm.
- Cut the reddish fabric into a circle with 1 cm diameter and insert this not broken heart into the doll. It can assume a diferent shape because it is difficult for it to remain round when we insert it. This is perfectly fine.
- Sew up the opening by hand.
- The doll is ready. It is full of dreams and with a not broken heart. The time, energy and love we spend in making each doll will inspire our generous dreams to come true in the real world.
Download (PDF): dreamsandaheart_doll_pattern
Without dreams and a heart…
…we can’t stand up.
York Hall, London UK
We spent last weekend at York Hall in Bethnal Green London at D&D8 talking about what we are going to do about theatre and the performing arts.
Ellis, Hugh, Mandy Amelia, Aimee and other people I don’t remember their names came this weekend to talk about the project. First time people spontaneously wanted to help me to make dolls. There is a video Phelim recorded some of us making them, it’s on this website on Themes at the video section.
We talked about making 700 dolls . There are already 300. They are all filled with dreams that come from our old pillows. They also have a heart. Dreams and a Heart. Write down on your hand ‘ bring the pillow’. Ellis brought me his pillows next day, thank you!
I added some empty dolls lying down on the floor at the middle of the big circle. I said ‘Without dreams and a heart we can’t stand up’.
Please email me if you want to donate your own pillow or your family/friends pillows. There are still 400 dolls to be made so I need lots of dreams to stuff them. Thank you!
