Storytelling Sunday - Sew Sindy

Welcome to Storytelling Sunday! Come on in, did you bring a story with you?

This is the story of a girl, a book and a doll called Sindy.

Once upon a time, when men walked on the moon and everything we ate was plastic, I asked for a Sindy doll for my birthday. I loved my Sindy; and I longed for the days when I too would own yellow boots zipped to my knee and a micro skirt which barely covered my behind. She had a small wardrobe to choose from, my doll. My Mum didn't believe in shop bought clothes. They were a waste of money. So Sindy stuck to her check mini until the glorious day I went to the library and found this:

Top Outfits for Teenage Dolls by Nesta Hollis

For the next year it was my favourite book in the whole wide world. I thought it had been written just for me. As soon as I handed it back into the library I put my name down to take it out again. On a loop.

The ones I made then

And then I sewed. Oh, I sewed. Any scrap I could save, any ribbon I could gather. Annette-next-door joined in; and we had grand plans for a Sindy Boutique, lovingly crafted from old cereal packets. We worked through the eight weeks of our Summer holiday, piling up lots of skirts (easy); dresses (a bit harder); to tailored jackets (pretty darn tricky, since you ask). I have them still though we never did finish up that shop. Teenage life got in the way eventually. All that work? No, I'd never let them go.

The ones I make now. Felt coat and a dress from a sock

And that might have been the end of the story, if I hadn't got chatting to a scrapbooking friend one day. (Julie, thank you - this one's for you!). I described my book. She said, quick as you like, "Here's an Amazon link for a second hand copy. Buy it. You know you want to." Or something like that. So I did. I ordered it and it arrived and I opened it and I gasped. Because inside that pink cover I knew so well were some tracing paper patterns, lovingly folded into the right pages, all marked with the details in a pencil hand I had seen somewhere before. Were these the very patterns I had traced all those years before? The paper was the same, the writing very very similar..I can't say for sure because I couldn't find any library marks on my book (and you know that's the first thing I'd look for). So let's just dream; and believe that my book came back to me and that my patterns were waiting.

So that's my story for today. If you have one of your own to share you are very welcome to add a link and we'll come round for a read. Don't forget to tell your readers it's a Storytelling Sunday post so that they can join in too. The more the merrier!

Sindy in the nurses uniform I finally sewed thirty years after she first asked for it