Linda Tibbetts, 67, was never particularly interested in dolls.

She didn’t really consider herself artistic, only ever having drawn in school.

But she knew she could sew, so when an ailing Floridian former antiques dealer and neighbor asked her for help in the early 1980s to dress a 5-inch antique doll, Tibbetts’ interest was piqued.

“It was the worst thing I had ever done,” said Tibbetts, an Auburn native, in the kitchen of her summer lakeside cottage in Wales. “It was just too small. The seams were the width of a hair, and there was no room for error. Plus, I was using antique fabric!”

That doll cured her desire to sew, she said, but opened up a new world of dolls and doll repair.

After taking classes in Virginia and Massachusetts, the snowbird started offering her services to people in Florida and Maine.

Soon, word of mouth spread and she was getting calls from as far away as London, England.

“I just love doing it because you’re helping people with a piece of history. Some of these dolls are family heirlooms,” Tibbetts said. “And some of these dolls are 100 years old, and I know someone will be able to see it 100 years from now because I repaired it. It’s very rewarding knowing I was there. They will never know my name, but I will know I helped save that doll.”

Meticulously, Tibbetts starts a repair by removing glazed finishes. She gently cleans the doll of years of filth, and washes the body and the wig, also possibly replace the stuffing.

“It’s disgusting, but fascinating too because you’re looking at history,” she said.

Tibbetts has found anything from sawdust to horse hair to cotton inside dolls.

She has also found Band-Aids, roaches and various different fabrics.

After Tibbetts has cleaned the doll, she fills cracks layer by layer and recreates missing ears, fingers and toes.

After her final sanding and detail work is done, she hand paints the doll to its original look.

“I one time spent hours searching for a picture of Deanna Durbin for a doll repair. I vaguely knew what she looked like, but I wanted it to be perfect. When I handed the lady the finished doll, she burst into tears and I thought I had really messed up,” Tibbetts recalled. “But she was so happy because it looked just like it did when her mother had it as a little girl.”

Tibbetts doesn’t strive to make the dolls she repairs look new, but she does try to make them whole again and look like what they are — an antique.

She will spend days mixing paint colors to achieve the correct hue, and, whenever possible, she tries to use the original pieces or find antique replacement parts.

“You don’t put a new wig on an antique doll! It just ruins the doll. It’s like putting a top hat on a bum.”

But in the end, it’s all worth it.

“I get such a good feeling seeing the finished doll,” Tibbetts said, beaming.

A Special Place for Dolls, Linda Tibbetts’ business, specializes in antique doll repair, including but not limited to restringing, wig washing, cleaning and modeling missing pieces. 

For more information, call 375-7255.