Meet the Village Behind Every Bamboletta

I'd like to introduce you to some people - these are the magic makers that bring Bamboletta's together. 

It starts with my parents and my Nonna. Every week the three of them sit together at the kitchen table and cut the tubing that is the start of every Bamboletta head. They have a little system down pat and usually do it while watching Italian TV. 

Then there's Alana, who makes the heads. Sam, who sews all the bodies and Sarah who stuffs them (as well as cobbles the shoes!). Andrea, our yarn dyeing magician that is our doll hair. Leola who spins up those gorgeous handspun fancy 'fairy bits'. Lori, Karen, Samira, Yoshimi and Miwa who stitch all the clothing. Carol and Sue who knit the tiny sweaters. Sherry who sews the little undergarments. Kathleen, Launa, Sue, Bridgit and Cat who assemble the dolls, week in and out. 

Every two weeks, Audrey and I hop on a zoom together. She shows me what handspun has come in from Leola, and the yarn Andrea has just dyed. Together we put the doll hair bundles together, combining colour and playing with texture, deciding what each doll's hair will look like this week. It's honestly one of my favourite parts of the whole process. 

Then each week everything comes back to our studio in Chemainus. Then Audrey, who has been with me for 17 years and is honestly the reason any of this works, goes through every single doll for quality, tugging and pulling to make sure the dolls are sewn well. She organises everything into bins, packs it up carefully, and on Wednesday morning a courier arrives at my studio door in Vancouver.

That's my favourite moment of the week - I open the boxes to see what magic was created! There are the dolls, of course, but also clothing and other goodies that come in. I do unboxing videos each week to share this experience with the doll community (more on that later!)

We have the two studios because a litttle over ten years ago, my mom got really sick. I needed to come home to Vancouver to be with them and I really missed being away from home. But I couldn't bear to leave the ladies,  these women who'd been with me for years, who were so incredibly skilled and  helped build Bamboletta into what it is. 

I was incredibly lucky to have Audrey to hold the Island together while I came back and settled into Vancouver. I embroider the faces, get them all ready for adoption and ship them out from Vancouver - and that's how it works today! 

Almost all of the Bamboletta makers work from home so they can be with their children and that was always the point. When I was pregnant with my second son and struggling to keep up, a mama at school mentioned she was dreading going back to work. Mom's can relate .. the cost of childcare, the mental math that never quite adds up. So I bought her on, taught her how to make part of a doll so we could make more dolls and I could pay her and she could stay home - it just sort of happened this way. I grew so I hired another mama and then another! 

If you made it to the end of this,  thank you! This village of people is what makes every single doll possible, and I'm so grateful for every one of them.

Warmly,
Christina