Arizona Week

The Best Loved household has migrated from AR to the great state of AZ for a week of kid cuddling and family togetherness.  First things first.  I decided it was time to pass on my childhood dolls to the BestLoved Grand girls.  I have two Madame Alexander dolls that I treasured as a child and thought my own daughters would love them.  Alas, they were indifferent to dollies and when they were old enough to take care of my beauties I felt that they wouldn't really care if they had the dolls or not so the babies stayed in the drawer.  Now the grands are getting old enough to enjoy them and they DO like dolls.  I have two childhood dolls and (at least for now) two Grand daughters.  It's kismet, the planets are aligned and I'm ready to pass them on.

Baby girl 2 is now the custodian of my Little Women Jo doll.  Her stringing broke years ago and I was able to find several tutorials on restringing and think I did a great job of putting her back together.  I did some research, and she is a Lissy doll body - eleven inches tall and straight legged. From what I can find Madame Alexander has always made Little Women dolls but this model from 1962 or 63 was a little unusual.  The most common ones are in the 8 inch Wendy doll body or I found a few on line that had bendable knees.  Apparently the greatest value in these dolls comes from their clothes and my Jo's dress is in fantastic shape with her labels still intact.  I did replace the elastic on the waist of her petticoat and the black braid trim on her pinafore was stitched down  where it was coming unstuck a little.  I was sad to find her pantaloons and socks had vanished somewhere in the last I won't say how many years.  Her original shoes are still perfect, and a good thing cause on ebay these things cost more than I spend on my own shoes.  

I wanted to make her some modern clothes and went on a search for doll patterns.  I feel lucky that I found MHD Designs at DollOutfits.com.  I got to "play dolls", BL Girly girl was excited. I can't tell who's prettier.