This is where everything is made.

It is not big, and it was never meant to be a sewing room. It was supposed to be the dining room. But we eat in the kitchen — which, by British standards, is generous — so the dining room became mine. When we were planning the move I had thought I would take one of the bedrooms. In the end this was the better trade.

I have nothing to compare it with. This is the only sewing room I have ever had. Before it, there was a corner of the living room.

Nothing here was tidied or arranged for the camera. This is simply how the room is on an ordinary day.

Why I started

I did not begin sewing for dolls with any thought of income.

My husband is a professional. I was a stay-at-home mother. I wanted something of my own — something to do in my free time, when the house was quiet, that I enjoyed. And I wanted a little money of my own for the dolls I was beginning to collect, because he supported the family and I was the one indulging a hobby, and I felt guilty about that.

I should be honest about this, because I would not want anyone to have the wrong idea. The sewing was never about money. What it earned was welcome, and it went straight back into fabric or into dolls — but it did not pay for all of this. The fabric on those shelves and the dolls in this room were not bought out of what I earned. That would be a nice story, and it isn't the true one.

He never once made me feel it. Quite the opposite.

In America I did not drive. So it was him.

On his weekends, when he should have been resting — driving me out from Queens to Long Island when I was shopping for fabric. Driving me into New York, into the garment district. And later, once he had found the dealership, all the way out to the Poconos in Pennsylvania. That is not a short drive, and he made it four times, for four machines.

Sometimes he would wait for me in the car park. Sometimes he came into the shops with me, because our daughter was a toddler and somebody had to look after her.

My English was still very basic then, so he did the deep research on the machines himself: the specifications, the reviews, the comparisons. He worked out which one I should have.

And there were the times I topped up my credit cards with fabric, or with dolls — and he paid them at the end of the month, without a word about it.

He is the one I complain to about a difficult customer, or about some "problem" in the doll world. He is always on my side.

And when I said I wanted to host the Sasha Festival — the annual event, held in the UK only twice before, in 2000 and 2012, with people flying in from America and from all over Europe — he understood exactly what it would mean for us. He said: go and do it. We will help you.

It took nearly two years. I was not at dinner. I was not looking after the house the way I usually do. And I did not only organise and run the event — I made the gifts for the attendees as well, smocked dresses, sewn from my own stash, and I charged the Festival ten pounds a dress.

He never once complained. His only worry was that I was doing too much.

It ran for three days — Friday, Saturday and Sunday. He was there for all three, with our daughter, helping me. And filming it.

A great part of what I am is him.

We never sat down and decided any of it. It simply became the shape of our life, and it stayed that way, even after the children were grown and out of full-time education.

There are moments when I am sorry I never pursued a career of my own. I do feel it, sometimes. But then I think about what the other version of my life would have cost.

I was there. And I am still here, when they come home.

That is not something you can be paid for, and it is not something you get back.

So I do not know how to weigh it, and I have stopped trying. Both things are true.

What I do know is that none of this would exist without him. It is thanks to my husband that I have the luxury of staying at home and doing what I love. He supports my madness — and not only with understanding and encouragement, but with his wallet. The fabric, the machines, the cameras, this room. All of it.

We are alike in one thing. We both love good engineering: an object that is properly made, that does what it promises, and that lasts. It is why he read every specification before we bought a machine. It is why he enjoyed mending the broken ones we found years later at car boot sales. And it is why I would rather not sew at all than sew on a machine that fights me.

The same instinct in both of us, pointed at different objects.

The machines

People ask me what machine they should buy. So let me tell the whole story, including the mistakes — because the mistakes are the useful part.

But first I should tell you something about myself, because it explains everything that follows. I am lazy by nature.

With everything I do, I am looking for what will save me time, and what can be done faster. Always. It is how my mind works.

But never — not once — at the cost of quality. If a shortcut makes the work worse, it is not a shortcut. It is just worse.

That is the whole of it, really. Everything I have bought, and everything I have taught myself, comes from those two things pulling against each other.

And I should say one more thing, before the list of machines makes me sound like an expert. I was not.

I had very little experience of sewing machines. As a girl I made clothes for myself, but on a neighbour's machine — my mother's had broken years before. That was it. That was everything I knew, and it stopped when I was barely into my twenties.

So when I started buying machines, I did not know what I was looking for. I could not have told you what made one machine better than another. I went on feeling.

And I want to be plain about something else. If we had not had the money to try all those machines, I would have made it work anyway. You always do. A good machine is a gift, not a requirement — and I was lucky to be able to look for mine.

The first, around 2003, came from BJ's. About $300, the way you might buy a kettle. It did what it did, and it taught me that I wanted more.

The Singer was the first machine I bought from the dealership in the Poconos. Around $800 — not cheap. And I did not like it. I did not like the stitch it made, and I did not like the machine. That is worth saying plainly, because price is not the same thing as quality, and a well-known name is not a guarantee. I have never gone back.

The Brother, about $1,200. A basic embroidery machine. This was where I began to understand what a machine could do beyond a straight seam.

The Baby Lock Ellure, about $3,500. A serious machine, and a real step up — though not the top of their range.

And then the Husqvarna Viking Designer SE, around $8,000, in 2006. The one that stayed.

Four machines in under two years.

In America the quilting shops had a system that suited me exactly. You bought a machine, and if you wanted to upgrade within six months you paid only the difference in price. So in effect you had half a year to live with a machine and find out whether it was right for you — and if it wasn't, you were not punished for having chosen wrongly.

I used that system properly. Four machines, four drives from Queens to the Poconos, and at the end of it I had the machine I actually wanted.

But I should be honest about what I was doing. I was missing something. I knew I wanted better, without being able to say what better meant — and I assumed that more expensive would give it to me. That is what I believed at the time, and it is not entirely true.

What I was actually looking for was two things I could not yet name: a machine that would not fight me, and a machine that would take the fiddling away.

I have a theory about how I ended up with the top of the line. My husband had driven me out to the Poconos four times by then, and I think he simply got tired of going.

Or, more likely, it was a birthday present. We have a joke about this in our house: he buys me tools for my birthday.

I am not complaining.

What made the Designer SE worth it

Two things made sewing a pleasure rather than a task, and they are still the two things I would look for in any machine.

Automatic tension, and an automatic presser foot lift. At the time, this was the only machine on the market that would raise the presser foot for you. Everything else offered, at best, a knee lift — a bar you knock sideways with your leg. Once you have had the machine do it for you, you cannot go back.

Saved stitches. Nobody talks about this, and it has saved me an enormous amount of time. You set a stitch exactly as you want it, and you save it to the menu. Then you press a number and sew.

The standard gathering stitch is about 5mm. That is far too long for doll clothes. For me 3.5mm is perfect, so 3.5mm is what I saved. Every time I gather a sleeve or a skirt, I press the number and it is right.

The same with zig-zag. The default is too wide for what I do, so I edited one for lightweight fabrics and another for cotton, and saved both. Along with the other stitches I use most.

It sounds like a small thing. Multiply it by every seam, of every garment, over twenty years.

And I will tell you something that may sound like a confession. I have never — not once — had to adjust the presser foot pressure. I select what I want from the menu and the machine does the rest. In fact I do not know how to change those settings. It has never come up.

The same is true of my overlocker.

That is what a good machine is for. Not to give you a thousand things to fiddle with, but to take the fiddling away, so that all your attention goes where it belongs.

The overlocker is a Baby Lock Evolve — around $1,800, bought in America after the sewing machine. Eight spools, automatic threading, the best that was available at the time. Nearly twenty years later it is still running, and I have never wanted another.

Dual voltage, before there was a plan

We chose the Husqvarna deliberately, a year before we left America — and we chose the dual-voltage model, because we had begun to think that one day, perhaps, we might go back to Europe.

We had come from Europe, after all. There was no plan and no date. But the possibility was always there, at the back of our minds, and we bought the machine that could come with us if it happened.

It happened. We came to England in September 2007, and the machine came too.

So did almost all the furniture in this room. The sewing table I bought when I was still working in that corner of the living room — nothing special, an ordinary table from an ordinary shop — and I am still sewing on it, more than twenty years later. The desk under the overlocker is a cheap one that came with a cupboard: not beautiful, but it works. The old bookcase is still holding fabric. The cutting table crossed the Atlantic too.

The cutting table was my husband's idea. Before it, I cut fabric on the kitchen table.

And the fabric came. I brought boxes of it — roughly enough to fill the coloured bookcase, which was my entire American stash. It is organised differently now, and it is dwarfed by everything I have gathered since: bought in England, imported from America, brought back from Europe. It has come from everywhere.

The machine I sew on now

From 2006 until 2021, the Designer SE was my daily machine. Fifteen years, every day, every dress.

It never once went in for a repair. It has never had a fault. Only the annual clean.

But by 2021 it was well known that parts for it were no longer being made. My machine was perfect, and it was living on borrowed time.

And without my machine, I am lost. The annual service takes about a week — send it away, wait, get it back. I had kept an ordinary sewing machine as a spare for exactly those weeks, and I hated it. Truthfully, I did not sew at all while the good machine was gone. I would rather wait than work on a machine that fights me.

So I needed a second machine, and I thought hard about it.

My first plan was to buy new — the top of the line. I went to look at it, and the size stopped me. It was far bigger than what I had, and this room is small. A machine that will not sit comfortably on the table is not a better machine, whatever it can do.

The other option was a Bernina, top of the range, roughly the same size as mine. But it was a great deal of money, and it was a machine I did not know. What if I could not get on with it? What if the way it worked never became natural to me? You cannot return a machine like that.

So I chose a Designer Diamond deLuxe. Second-hand, £1,300, in 2021. The same family, the same logic, the same feel under the hand — with a few more stitches than the SE had. I knew, before I ever sat down at it, that it would not fight me.

Now the work does not stop.

I do trust Viking, and I have no complaint with the brand. But that is not really why I stay with it. I stay because I know it. There are other makes with excellent reputations, and I am sure they are very good — but I have never used them, and every new machine means a learning curve: new habits, a new routine, weeks of thinking about the machine instead of the work. At this point that is a cost I am not willing to pay.

One thing has changed, though, and it is worth saying. My first Viking was made in Sweden. Everything is made in China now. Whether that matters, I do not know. But it is not the same thing, whatever the badge on the front still says.

I almost never use the embroidery function on either machine. But there are stitches I use constantly — the heirloom stitches. I work with a wing needle for the hemstitching that leaves that pierced, lacy edge, and a double needle for pintucks. Those are not decoration for its own sake. They are how a doll's dress gets the details that a full-size garment would have.

The Designer SE stays in its cabinet in the other room. It is my first love, and it is the spare now — not because it failed, but because after all those years it has earned a rest.

I bought the Diamond myself. Every machine before it was a present from my husband.

I could not justify spending eight thousand dollars on a brand-new machine now.

Although — I probably will, for my sixtieth birthday. Just to have a new toy to play with.

The iron

The iron matters more than people think, and it took me two years and several bad purchases to find the right one.

Pressing is not a finishing job. It is done at every stage, as you go: every seam, every fold, every hem. A garment that has not been pressed at each step will never look right at the end, however well it is sewn. At doll scale, where everything is small and every fold shows, it matters more, not less.

My iron runs almost constantly while I am working. That is why the door of this room is always open.

The Rowenta. For fourteen years I used a Rowenta — dual voltage, bought originally for household ironing and later used for sewing. It worked perfectly, so when we came to England I simply kept using it. I already had a voltage transformer in the sewing room for the overlocker, and it had a spare socket. The Rowenta ran until 2016, and then it stopped.

Then two years of disappointment. I bought a replacement that was supposed to do the job, and the steam leaked dark water and stained the fabric. I tried two others. The same. And they were heavy — after hours of pressing, weight matters.

So I looked for something lighter, and because I need a great deal of steam, I went for a steam generator. A cheaper model. It stained the fabric too.

Two years of buying irons and being unhappy with every one of them.

Then, in 2018, I bought the one I have now: a Philips PerfectCare Elite Plus, model GC9682/86. I paid over £500, which felt like a great deal of money for an iron.

And it does exactly what it promises. It is safe on every fabric — I have never scorched anything with it — and it is safe on my hands. I used to burn myself on an iron from time to time. With this one, never.

But I will be honest, because I would not want to sell anyone a fairy tale. It has broken. It went wrong once the warranty had expired, and it needed repairing. Then it went wrong again after the repair warranty ran out. Twice more, in fact.

So it is not perfect, it is not cheap, and I have paid to mend it more than once.

I would still buy it again tomorrow. The time it saves me is priceless.

The ironing board, and six of them

The ironing board is small, from Dobbies. I started using it about ten years ago, when it was cheap.

I had struggled for years with full-size boards, and before this one I used a little portable thing on the floor. When I finally found the one that was right for this room, I bought several more — because they rust from the steam, and I knew that one day this one would be gone.

I was right, and the plan has already paid for itself. Two of them went with my children when they left for university. Two have rusted through. I still have two in reserve.

The board in the room now is not the original. It is one of the spares. I made a cover for it, too.

The window, the light, and the curtains I almost hate

The window looks onto the street, and there is a pavement right outside it. The blinds are never open. When someone walks past and your eyes meet, it is awkward — and the light in here is strong enough that they would see straight in. I am not hiding. I simply prefer to work privately.

The light was my husband's doing. I needed more of it, so he installed a panel.

And then I had a new problem, because strong light damages fabric along the folds. It had already happened to some rows stored near the window, even with the blinds always down. There was no room to fit doors to the bookcases, so I bought fabric from IKEA and made curtains for them instead.

They protect thousands of pounds of fabric, and they let me pin moth sachets to the inside, which I prefer to laying them among the fabric itself.

Do I like them? No. I almost hate them, honestly.

I used to walk into this room and see all of it at once — every bolt, every print. I could sit and look at it and enjoy it, and wait for something to catch my eye. Now, if I come in without an idea already formed, I have to draw the curtains back one by one, waiting for a fabric to ask me to pick it.

The curtains protect the fabric, and they block the inspiration. I know that. And they stay, because they have a reason to be there.

More fabric, fewer ideas

There is something I have said many times, and I stand by it: I was more productive, and I had more ideas, when I had less fabric.

The more you own, the longer every decision takes. You get to the idea for a design, and then you have to choose the fabric — and then you doubt it. Is that the right one? Would this other one be better? Should it be a combination? So you fetch a second, and then a third. And then you have to put back the ones you will not use.

A small stash decides for you. A large one asks you to decide, over and over, before a single stitch is sewn.

And mess blocks me. My eyes work like a scanner: if something is out of place, I see it, and it takes something from me. So everything that comes out has to go back, and that is part of the cost of every decision too.

Why I clean it every single day

I clean this room after every day's sewing.

I do it because it is small. That is the truth of it. In a big room you can leave things out — a project on the table, a pile you will come back to tomorrow. A small room does not forgive you. If I did not put everything back at the end of the day, I would not be able to work in here the next morning.

So the tidiness is not a virtue. It is a condition.

Though it is more than that, too. In the living room, or anywhere else in the house, if something is out of its place I can go to bed and it will not trouble me. In this room, I cannot.

The boxes

The plastic shoeboxes and the larger boxes hold everything small: trims, laces, buttons and every other kind of trimming, embroidery threads, doll shoes, accessories.

They stack one on top of another, right up to the ceiling, because in a room this size every centimetre counts and none of it can be wasted.

The high boxes hold the things I barely use. Sewing makes dust — a great deal of it — and I do not dust up there every week. So the top of the room is for the things that can afford to wait.

Behind the door there is a stackable tower: doll shoes, mostly, with the embroidery threads on the very top. When I am about to smock, I lift down three boxes and go through them, choosing colours.

I did buy the proper plastic boxes made especially for embroidery threads — the ones with compartments. I found ordinary boxes more practical, and they take up less room. The threads inside are a little tangled. I know. But I would rather have the space.

If you see boxes out of place in the video, that is because I am in the middle of washing them. Dusting is only ever a temporary solution; eventually they have to be taken outside and properly washed. So I do them one at a time — empty, wash, dry, refill, next — right through to the last one.

Choosing the threads

I choose the threads at the same time as the fabric, and lay them out on the table. But that is only a first choice.

Once the fabric is pleated, I often change my mind — because a print looks different once it is gathered, and the colours that seemed right against the flat cloth are not always the ones that are right against the pleats. So the threads wait on the table until the pleating is done, and then they are judged again.

As a rule I want the embroidery to blend with the fabric — to belong to it, to look as though the colours grew there rather than being laid on afterwards. That is how I work most of the time.

But not always. Sometimes there is a colour in the print that is barely there — present, but too quiet — and I will bring it up with the thread. The embroidery gives it a voice it did not have on its own.

The vases

There are three glass vases on the shelf above the cutting table, filled with lace.

The vases were presents. They came holding plants or flowers, given to me by people I love. The lace inside them is lace I have taken from antique pieces, kept and sorted.

That is how those people are in the room with me while I work.

The antique whites

There is a bookcase of white cloth — folded petticoats, christening gowns, whitework, lace, cut pieces waiting for their next life.

What you see there is a very small part of it. Most of the collection is upstairs, in wardrobes and under beds. The room only holds what is in play: the pieces already cut, the fabric for the next project, the batiste and heirloom cottons I am working through.

I have been collecting them for well over ten years. I love searching for them almost as much as I love using them.

The pleater — and being prepared

The pleater is not even in this room. There is no space for it, so it lives just outside, on top of a doll wardrobe.

It sat upstairs, in its box, unopened, for years.

I bought it long before I needed it, because I like to be prepared. I am the kind of person who wants to be ready if something unexpected happens.

Last year I bought a second one, as a spare.

I have six ironing boards. I chose a dual-voltage sewing machine a year before there was any plan to leave the country. I keep a spare bottle of sunflower oil, and spares of other things, even though the shops are two minutes away by car.

Where does it come from? Probably from growing up in a communist country, and not being rich. Not having things — and then, when you can afford something, buying more than you need, in case you need it and cannot have it, or it isn't there.

I cannot explain it better than that.

The things on the walls

My daughter has drawn illustrations of my Sasha dolls, and given them to me for my birthdays. One of them is framed here.

There is a photograph from Kendal, a Sasha friend, of a doll wearing one of my outfits. There is artwork from another Sasha friend, Di Dailey. There is a birthday card from my son.

Everything on these walls was given to me by someone.

Except one thing. There is a vintage pattern pinned up — the one with the continuous collar at the front. It did not come out right, and I put it there to remind me to fix it.

That was more than two years ago. I still haven't.

The dolls, the chair, the gloves

The dolls in the room are my models: a Sasha, a Sasha Baby, a Little Darling. Two of them — the Baby with the blonde wig, and the blonde Sasha behind the Little Darling — were gifts from a Sasha friend.

The chair is an office chair. It has been here at least five years. Before it I used a small IKEA chair with no arms, probably made for a teenager — and I liked it precisely because it was small and took up no space.

The white cotton gloves are for handling the BJD dolls.

I wash my hands constantly, and I never wear hand cream while I am sewing or handling dolls. That is why my hands look dry in the photographs and in the videos. Working with fabric dries them further. It is the price of the work, and I would not do it differently.

The light that turns itself off

The light in here is on a motion sensor, as it is in every room of the house except the bedrooms.

Which means that when I am embroidering, and I sit very still for a long time, the sensor decides the room is empty and turns the light off. I have to wave a hand to bring it back.

I do try to cut those moments out of the videos. But if you ever see me move a hand for no apparent reason — that is why.

The screen in the corner is a computer. I use it to listen to television programmes or a film while I work.

Car boot sales, and the doll I never found

About two years before the pandemic I discovered car boot sales.

We went perhaps ten times, my husband and I, on Sunday mornings in Milton Keynes. I was hoping to find a Sasha doll that needed rescuing.

I never found one. Not a single one, in all those mornings.

What I came home with instead were sewing machines. Old ones, thirty or forty pounds each, so as not to arrive back empty-handed. I cleaned them and my husband fixed them — small repairs, nothing major. We never bought a single part.

We fixed five or six in the end, and gave every one of them away. One went to my mother. One to a friend. Two more to people I did not know, who needed a machine.

There was one I kept, for a while: a mechanical Bernina, bought on eBay. We had already bought and mended other makes, and Bernina is known as one of the best, so we went looking for one deliberately. That one was my project. I got it working.

We found other things too. A batch of real leather, which I used to re-upholster the seats of our kitchen chairs — they are from 2001 and I could not part with them. A beautiful cotton corduroy.

And sometimes we simply saw old things that brought back our childhoods. Something that, when we were young, we had longed for and never had.

The car boot sales reopened after the pandemic. I have never been back.

The mind, not the tools

I have written a great deal here about machines, and irons, and what things cost. So let me say the thing that matters more than all of it.

If you want something badly enough, nothing can stop you.

When I was a young woman I made clothes for myself so that I would look nice. I made them on a neighbour's sewing machine, because my mother's had broken and we did not have another. The fabric was certainly not the best. And the iron had no steam — you heated it, and then you stopped and waited, and you could not iron cotton at all without scorching it.

That was what I had. And I made clothes I was proud to wear.

And I will tell you something that I am not sure I want to be true. The most productive I have ever been was in that corner of the living room, cutting my fabric on the kitchen table.

No sewing room. No cutting table. No stash behind curtains. One machine, one corner, and the kitchen table when I needed to cut.

I have thought about that a great deal, and I still do not know quite what to do with it.

So if you are reading this and thinking: I have no husband to support me, and I would count myself lucky to make a little extra money from my sewing — you can do it. You truly can.

You do not need the most expensive tools. You never did.

The most important thing is the mind, not the tools.

The room I dreamed of

When I first started sewing and was looking for a machine, there was no Facebook. There were forums — women who sewed, showing their rooms, reviewing their machines. Some of them had beautiful studios: big, bright, modern. I remember thinking that one day, when the children were grown, I would have one of those.

The children are grown. I would still love that studio. It isn't going to happen in the next few years, and I have made my peace with that — not by giving up on it, but by loving what I actually have.

Every corner of this room has a purpose. I know exactly what is where. Sitting at the machine I can reach the cutting table without standing; when I do stand, I am at the ironing board.

It is small, and it is practical. And it is my happy place.

Twenty years ago I was the one looking at other women's sewing rooms, wondering what mine might be like one day. Now I am showing mine.

Not because it is exceptional — it isn't. Only because someone showed me theirs, and it meant something to me at the time.

This is simply what I have, and how I work in it.

Ask me

I am fifty-seven. I have been doing this for more than twenty years, and I would like to share what I know.

So if there is something you want to understand, ask me. I will tell you what I can. There are a few things I am not ready to share yet — every maker has those — but everything else, gladly.

I may not answer straight away. I have my family, my sewing, and my garden, and each of them wants its share of the day. But I will answer.

And even if you never ask me — ask someone. There are so many groups, so many people who know things, so much that is there for the taking.

Do not be like me. I was too proud to ask.

Ask. Use everything you can find. It is all there to help you get where you want to go.

There is another reason I say this.

My daughter has no interest in sewing, or in dolls. I have no daughter-in-law yet, and no granddaughter. So for a long time I have wondered who any of this would go to.

But I have a grand-niece. She is almost four.

When she comes to visit, one of the first things she asks for is sewing. So we go into the room and we turn the machine on. She chooses the fabric herself — always the pink one, with the flowers.

Then she sits on my lap and holds the fabric, guiding it under the presser foot with her own hands, while I press the pedal in secret to keep the speed slow.

And when that is done she asks to sit at the overlocker, so that she can cut the threads. She is very proud of that part.

So there is a chance. There is always a chance.

Watch the video of my sewing room

P.S. — I am publishing this without reading it through one last time. Every time I read it, I remember something else I want to add.

Jane Woodward — Hand Knitted Socks & Clothes for Sasha Dolls

Some friendships in the Sasha world are built over years of shared passion, and Jane Woodward is one of those people I have known for a long time. We have crossed paths at Sasha events over the years, and there is always a happy chat — she is one of those warm, generous souls that make this collecting community so special.

Jane hand knits the most adorable socks, cardigans, and baby pram sets for Sasha dolls, and her work is a delight. Her socks come in both short and long styles, knitted in very fine, soft cotton that is gentle and beautifully finished. She works in a wonderful range of colours — those shown in her photos are ready to purchase, and other colours are available on request.

Jane also knits for the Sasha Baby, producing the sweetest little cardigans and pram sets that are perfectly scaled and made with the same care and attention she brings to everything she makes.

If you would like to purchase Jane's socks or knitted pieces, please contact her directly — she will be happy to help with colours, sizes, and availability.

To purchase, please contact Jane by email.

Diane Dailey — Sasha Doll Face-Up Artist

Some of the nicest connections in the Sasha doll world happen by chance. Diane came into my world when her husband found me on eBay over ten years ago, purchasing a doll outfit for her. From that small beginning a friendship grew — and I soon discovered that Diane is not only a passionate Sasha doll collector herself, but one of the most gifted and sought-after face-up artists in the Sasha community.

A face-up is the art of repainting a doll's facial features — restoring faded colours, refining expressions, and breathing new life into a beloved doll. A worn or blank face can look flat and lifeless; in the hands of a skilled artist, the same doll becomes a completely different presence. The transformation can be extraordinary.

What sets Diane apart is her commitment to naturalism. She never over-works a face. Every doll she touches looks like a real child — not a painted toy — and that restraint is the mark of a truly confident artist. Her work is delicate, patient, and deeply respectful of each doll's individual character.

Her freckle work is a genuine signature and something I have rarely seen done so convincingly. Tiny, varied, scattered naturally across the nose and cheeks, her freckles look as though a child has spent a summer outdoors — never uniform, never overdone, always placed with an artist's eye. It is an extraordinary detail that brings a doll to life in a way that is hard to put into words until you see it in person.

Her eye painting is equally exceptional. Whether warm amber-brown, luminous grey-green, quiet grey-blue or deep hazel, every pair of eyes has real depth and character. She has the rare gift of making the eyes look back at you — and that is the hardest thing to achieve in a face-up, the thing that separates a truly great artist from an ordinary one.

Diane works across the full range of Sasha dolls — standard girls and boys, toddlers, babies, and darker-skinned dolls — and brings the same sensitivity to each. No two of her dolls look the same, yet all of them look unmistakably right. Each one has its own quiet personality, its own expression, its own soul.

She accepts commissions from collectors all over the world, and from everything I have seen of her work — both on my own dolls and on those she has done for others — I recommend her without hesitation. If you have a doll that needs a little, or a lot, of love, Diane is someone I trust completely.

To enquire about commissions, availability, pricing, and waiting times, please contact Diane directly at [email protected] — she will be happy to discuss your doll and what she can do for it.

An Antique Christening Slip Reborn — a Hand-Embroidered Dress for Sasha

Every so often a piece comes along that asks to be given a second life, and this was one of them.

I have a large collection of antique and vintage christening gowns and slips, many of them bought with exactly this in mind — to one day recreate something new from them. There is such craftsmanship in these old hand-sewn pieces, and it feels right to give them another life rather than let them sit forgotten in a drawer.

This dress and underskirt began as an antique christening slip — one made entirely by hand, by a very skilful seamstress, from fine cotton lawn. When it came to me it carried rust stains from years in storage — on the upper part of the skirt, and some on the lace at the bottom hem. Marks like these might make you set a piece aside, but an old, hand-made piece like this is almost always worth rescuing: beneath the damage there was still plenty of beautiful fabric, and lace and entredeux worth saving.

I began by inspecting the slip and cutting it apart, pressing the good pieces ready to use. The lace I carefully unpicked to reuse as an edging for the collar, and the entredeux I unpicked and set aside for a future project — with pieces like this, nothing is wasted. I always take a little time, too, to look closely at the original work; there is so much skill in these old hand-sewn pieces, and always a technique to admire and learn from.

I had planned to use the bottom of the slip's skirt as the skirt for the dress. There was one small area of damage and one larger one, though, so I had to make a choice: to keep a good fullness in the skirt and use as much of the original as possible, I chose to include a section of the damaged lace rather than lose the fullness. Wherever there's a fault in aged material like this, I mark it with a pin on the finished dress, as I always do — so you can see exactly where it is.

From the remaining part of the skirt I then selected two pieces for the front bodice. Because the slip was entirely hand-stitched, the pintucks are not perfectly uniform, so it's difficult to find two absolutely matching pieces — but I did my best to pair them. Down the centre I used some of my treasured remnants, the little pieces I set aside for future use every time I cut into an antique dress.

I adjusted the collar pattern to allow for the lace edging I'd saved from the slip. (I made four collars, though I only needed two, knowing from experience that a few might not come out quite perfectly.) The underskirt is made from the same slip, and I have hand-embroidered it too.

Much of this was sewn through the recent heatwave, in a sewing room almost as hot as it was outside. I hadn't originally planned to add any embroidery at all. But once the heat eased and I made the underskirt, I found myself adding a little hand embroidery along its bottom edge — and then I couldn't stop. The embroidery grew to cover the whole piece: the skirt, the bodice, the cuffs, the collar, and along the waistline sides, following the lace from the front around to the back closure on both sides. Every stitch is worked by hand.

I've also filmed the making of this dress, so you can see the whole process — from the antique slip to the finished piece. You can watch the video here.

The result is a dress and its matching underskirt, made from a hand-sewn antique slip and finished with hand embroidery throughout — a new life for a piece that was made with love a very long time ago.

This dress has now found her owner in my Facebook sale group. You can still see all the photos of the finished dress here.

Part 1 collar guide — updated!

I've just updated the Sewing a Perfect Peter Pan Collar — Part 1 guide with quite a few new bits and pieces.

There's a new section on why a collar "flies" and a simple way to test your pattern for it, more on choosing your fabric and where to start stitching, a note on the difference the scale of the doll (and your machine) makes, a little of my own sewing story, and a few extra tips besides.

It's the same guide on the same post — just go back to the Part 1 post and download again to get the new PDF. It will save as a new file (with a different name), so do delete your old copy to avoid any confusion and keep this latest version.

As always, this guide grows as I think of things, so it's worth checking back now and then for the latest version — and if there's ever something you're stuck on, do leave a comment or send me a message. I'm always happy to help.