When dolls are broken, sometimes we don't know where to start and we start searching out missing pieces or components to fix a doll. Sometimes they are not available and sometimes you don't actually need them at all. Madame Alexander 8" dolls originally came with a head hook and two leg hooks and a series of thick elastic rubber bands to string everything together. These elastic rubber bands deteriorate on the older 1950's-1960's dolls pretty easily and then the doll pretty much falls apart from there. To repair, you don't need a kit even though there are those that may sell replacement rubber bands or maybe the hooks, but you can fix your doll simply with a roll of elastic cord. I used a clear elastic cord, but you can use thicker or white if you prefer.

We received a set of Madame Alexander Little Women 8” dolls to work on in our hospital. All of the elastic bands had deteriorated on the dolls and they were basically in pieces. Much of the clothing had yellowing on the white pieces, pantaloons and aprons, and needed to be washed and restored. The bodies had dye transfer from black, red, and burgundy which had bled into the bodies, and their stands had some rust. I chose to do a simple restoration on these, so did a basic body wipe down to eliminate any surface dye but not deep clean out the dye stains. My goal was to piece them all back together, wash their outfits, and clean their stands so they could be quickly displayed.

I’m using Laurie as the main example as he was missing all his hooks, whereas all the other dolls in the series actually had their hooks in tact. I actually found the leg hooks to be quite difficult to work with as they easily slid off the elastic cord I was using. A thicker cord might have resolved this, but I found that the hooks didn't really provide any real benefit. As well with one of the dolls, the head hook came unhooked after some movement/play and became hooked onto the eye bar causing the eyes to not be able to open and close. I had to pull on the head and reset the hook to correct it and I know I wouldn't ever have that problem if I just didn't use the head hook at all and strung the head on the cord. Just my opinion of course, but the hooks were easy to lose and didn't seem like much benefit.

The first thing I did was the arms because they are the easiest. I cut a small piece of elastic cord about 8”. I used my Restringing Tool and Locking Clamp in Rainbow to accomplish this task. The arms have built in plastic hooks molded as part of the arms so you don't need any hooks. Using my clamp I fed a loop through the arm hole to the other side's arm hole and locked my clamp. Then I took the left arm and hooked it onto the loop. Then using my clamp I pulled the arm into place. This left me two ends of the elastic hanging out the other arm hole. I attached the other hook onto one of the elastic strands and then tied the two ends together pulling as tight as I could. This causes both arms to slide into place. I then tied several more knots on top of each other and cut the ends close to the knot. I then pulled the arm a bit away from the arm hole and the knot pulled into the inside of the body. I then cut a piece of elastic cord about 16" long and using my clamp, fed one end into the head and around the metal bar. Normally a hook gets attached to the pointed part of the bar, but because Laurie was missing his, I just used the elastic. It's a bit tricky to get a piece of elastic around that bar, but using my clamp I was able to feed it through and grab it until it was looped around the bar. Then using my clamp, I pulled the two ends through the body so that one end came out one leg hole and the other came out the other leg hole.

Inside the leg hole you can see the arm hooks connected by the elastic. You can see that after pulling tight, the space between the arms is only about an inch of elastic holding them together.

The leg has a small straight bar that usually had a metal hook attached, but the hooks aren't actually necessary and so I fed the elastic around the bar to attach the leg.

Feed your elastic around the bar and back through (make sure you have the right leg as you don't want to put a leg in backwards).

Feed the end of the elastic through the body to the other leg hole.

Pull the elastic tight bringing in all the slack, this will help align the head to the right spot and bring in the leg you've done tighter.

Feed one elastic end from the remaining leg hole around the bar on the second leg.

Tie the other elastic end and pull tight.

Tie the elastic as tight as you can go and knot 2 to 3 times on top of it to secure the elastic. Cut the ends close to the knot, pull the leg slightly out so that the knot and ends go inside the body.

Laurie is now completely restrung and able to stand once again. Arms and legs move normally. If you find any of your limbs too loose, you may not have pulled tight enough when you were doing your knots. Now that you know the process, you can easily try again - arms are attached to arms, and legs are attached to head.

For the clothing, once in the washer took most of the yellow out of the clothing in a normal wash. There was one piece of clothing that had some stubborn stains on a white pinafore so a cycle with bleach will restore that or soaking in dawn dishsoap and treated with stain remover will easily restore that. Then the dolls can be redressed and go to their new home. I wiped down all the stands and was able to remove much of the rusting spots and then re-used them to display the dolls. The dolls had a bit of dust buried in their hair styles so I just sprayed some water on top and patted them with a paper towel to absorb and clean them. I left the dye transfer on the bodies alone and just redressed them all. I may go back at a later time and do deep cleaning, but for now I am enjoying all the Little Women fully assembled again.