Vintage Rosebud Twin Dolls and their knitted clothes

I was delighted recently when the British woman’s magazine Women’s Weekly gave me permission to access the doll knitting patterns of the 1950s, to update them for modern knitters and publish in a new format. I am now scanning in all those lovely old patterns, giving the photos improved resolution and updating the needle sizes and knitting yarns for a new knitting public. The 1950s decade was an era of Elegance, Neatness and Well-Dressed Dolls. I was 8 years old when these patterns were first introduced and they were an immediate success. Little girls at school collected the patterns which were introduced fortnightly, and we learned to knit to give our little dolls outfits which were a reflection of the clothes we were wearing ourselves. In the 50s, when rationing was still around, school uniforms for the under-11s did not exist in state Primary Schools. Most of us had at most just two or three outfits so these little designs let us give our dolls lots of colourful clothes made from those little balls of wool left over from our mothers’ projects. I have huge admiration for the un-named designers and photographers who gave my own generation of little girls such a lot of fun. We took our dolls to school and admired each others’ wardrobes! I lived in Whitefield, Manchester at the time. There was a local mum who always had an admiring crowd of small girls on the pavement outside her window watching her sew little outfits by eye for these dolls on her treadle sewing machine; and waited patiently until she was ready to hand them out to us all, quite free. I asked her once why she did not tie knots on the end of each seam (as I had been taught to do by my own mother) and she patiently showed me how to run backwards and forwards a couple of times at each end of a seam. I ran home to tell my own mother and Mum never tied any more tedious knots! I have a great many of these patterns, and have begun the huge task of recreating the six-and-a-half-inch doll designs into four or five collections. Then will follow the seven-and-a-half-inch dolls …

“Our Twins in Fair-isle” from the 1st Collection