Paper Hittys
by Sara Cole, Doll Maker

My grandfather worked in a paper mill for most of his life, so when I was a child we always had all of the white paper we could ever need. Whenever we ran out Mom would just ask her father to bring us some more, and a few days later we'd have a ream or two of paper wrapped up in its clean white packaging. To this day, stacks of clean, new paper always seem magical to me, even if they're just sitting in my printer tray.

Since we lived in the country we entertained ourselves, and I can't remember a time when I didn't know how to make paper dolls. My mom taught me to make them, and even when I was making folders full of my own she could often be persuaded to sketch out a doll for me to color and outfit.

I always loved dolls too, and my friends and I used to spend whole days sorting through my grandmother's tomato boxes of fabric scraps, ribbons, rickrack, laces and trims to make elaborate wardrobes for our clothes pin and pipestem cleaner dolls. Paper dolls were my real passion, though, because I could rarely make a real doll that looked the way I wanted, and with paper dolls I could do anything. Not only that, but I could always carry a stack of paper and crayons, (and later colored pencils and markers), to create paper dolls when I had free time in school. I was never without paper doll making supplies, and from the first through perhaps the sixth grade all the girls in my class were as crazy about making our own paper dolls as I was.

Inevitably, of course, they outgrew paper dolls, and I did last of all. But I never stopped making them, especially with my little cousins, and when I first gained access to the Internet in college I was delighted to find some of the earliest paper doll collecting sites and e-mail lists online. From there my hobby grew to epic proportions and when I graduated and got married I began to spend all of my time creating paper dolls, most of which were shared on my web site. Paper Doll Parade eventually grew unmanageable because of the high traffic and huge number of paper dolls I had available for download and printing.

I read the book Hitty, Her First Hundred Years around the age of 10, and from there began my passionate desire to own a wooden doll. I got my wish on my 13th birthday when my mother made me a beautiful original wooden doll that is still among the most cherished in my collection. But I didn't think much about dolls for years except to make paper dolls of them, because the hobby simply seemed unaffordable. In 1999, I got the idea to make a paper doll of my childhood favorite, Hitty, and as I began to research on-line I discovered the world of Hitty collecting. Even then, the cost of Hittys was so discouraging that the hobby seemed completely out of reach and I pushed it aside. I didn't create a Hitty paper doll though, and two years later when I was again researching Hitty for another attempt at a paper doll set I rediscovered the Hitty world with even more information available online than there had been previously. This time I just couldn't stay away, and although I am still a paper doll fan and these two-dimensional sweethearts will always hold a special place in my heart, for me nothing compares to Hitty.

I carved my first wooden Hitty doll within a month, and Hitty has since led me into the creation of many of the wonderful dolls that seem to live inside my head, but that a child's hands could never have produced. Since the advent of doll making in my life I aspire to be a professional doll maker. And what of my Hitty paper doll? She is created at last and it is the first of many to come, for to me there could be no better subject for paper doll art than our darling Hitty. So gather some kids (or some Hittys) around , get the printer going, and break out the crayons and the scissors. It's paper doll time!