If you would like a Hitty-size doll of your very own but don’t have the time or skills needed to carve one, why not give this simple to sew Felt Kitty Friend a try! The materials are inexpensive, and you can make as many as you like. You can vary the hairstyles and hair colors to make each doll unique. I am developing some clothing patterns which I will post soon. But you can get started making the dolls right now. If you want something a bit more challenging, try the tutorial for Flexible Kitty Friends. Download the Felt Kitty Friend Pattern Here! You can share photos of your finished…
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Tutorial: Mini Quill Pen and Inkwell
This is a fun and easy craft tutorial to make a quill pen and inkwell for a Hitty doll. You can use any kind of bird feather, as long as it is at least 2” long. You can buy them from craft stores or simply collect naturally shed feathers from birds in your area. Materials: Feathers, 2” long or largerSmall metal bead caps or round drum-shaped ceramic beads (about 8-12 mm high)ScissorsOne foam packing peanut Many types of bead caps or round ceramic beads can work for the inkwells. Use whatever you have available, or purchase new beads from a craft store. I got mine from Hobby Lobby. Take the…
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Kitty at the Book Fair
Fall is here, the season of school book fairs. Kitty attended one recently to promote A Tale of Two Hittys. Here are some photos from the event.
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Tutorial: MICRO Mini Book
My Hitty dolls loved the Mini Books I made for them. However, Kitty has mentioned that they are a little too big to fit on Hitty size bookshelves. So I decided to make an even smaller version, which I call the MICRO Mini Book. The finished size is a mere 1 1/4” x 1 1/2”. One benefit of the smaller version is that I was able to fit TWO books on one double-sided page. The instructions below are written for a single book, and I recommend making one at a time. That way, if you make a mistake, you can correct it for the second book. Print out the .pdf…
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The Dickens Dresses
A Tale of Two Hittys begins in the year 1868. During the era, little girls wore bloomers, petticoats, a chemise (loose cotton undershirt), stockings and boots with buttons or laces. Depending on the age of the child, she might have to wear a corset. The dresses were often elaborate with lots of trimmings. For outerwear a little girl needed a coat, and the coat of choice was a paletot (pronounced “pal-uh-toe”). The paletot was a woman’s or girl’s jacket, usually worn over a skirt with a crinoline or bustle. Now, if you remember in the book, Hitty: Her First Hundred Years, Rachel Field describes Hitty’s Dickens outfit: “the watered-silk dress…
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Meet Kitty
Anyone familiar with the real Hitty doll knows that she has a wooden body with feet carved like boots and painted black. No one knows exactly where or when she was carved, but some people claim that dolls with similar boots have been found and dated to the mid-19th century, not 1827, when she is supposedly carved in the book Hitty: Her First Hundred Years, by a traveling peddlar. I believe this may upset some die-hard book lovers. However, for me it is simply a fascinating mystery! In 2021, I purchased a small doll on ebay. She is only 6″ tall. She has a shoulderhead (meaning the head, neck and…
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Who is Hitty?
I first read Hitty: Her First Hundred Years by Rachel Field when I was a teenager, and I still have the somewhat battered hardcover copy which I purchased used for $1. The edition was printed in October, 1943, and it had the colored frontispiece of Hitty sitting for her daguerreotype, illustrated by Dorothy P. Lathrop. I remember thinking at the time that it was a really good story, and as a young doll collector, I would have loved to have my own Hitty doll. But few people were making Hitty dolls at that time Above: photo of the real Hitty in the Stockbridge Library Museum in 2024 (courtesy of Beth…
