‘I live with 100 dolls and talk to them – I don’t care if people think I’m crazy, they’re my babies’

A woman who lives with 100 dolls and admits to speaking to them says she doesn’t care if people think she is crazy.

Marie Odendaal started playing with dolls as a way to communicate with her daughter, who has cerebral palsy – a brain disorder that appears in infancy or early childhood and permanently affects body movement, muscle coordination and can disrupt speech.

But now, the 69-year-old has built up a collection of 100 dolls and a thriving business making 400 tiny outfits a week for fellow doll-lovers.

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And they aren’t just toys to her – but her “babies”.

“I do talk to my dolls,” Marie told What’s The Jam.

“I say good morning to Samantha, but she remains silent – which is expected considering she’s a doll.

“My dolls are my life – and that’s why I talk to them.

“People can think I’m crazy but I don’t care.”

Marie says she’s known as the doll lady because dolls are her passion – and making outfits for her “babies” and for other doll lovers is her life’s work.

She said: “I’ve put some on display before too.

“Some in elegant evening gowns, a wedding dress, swimming costumes and cheerful summer frocks.

“And a Ken doll wearing camouflage trousers.

“He’s turned away from the girls next to him.

“Maybe it’s the delicate items of underwear I create that have made him coy.

“People ask why I make underwear for dolls and I say, ‘Don’t you teach your children to always wear underwear?’.”

Marie is proud of her work.

Every design, every piece of thread, every little flower or bead is selected with care and the stitching is done painstakingly by hand or on her sewing machine.

She said: “I can’t stand shoddy work.

“This is my full-time job, after all.

“But it’s about more than just income.”

It was the one thing both her and her daughter Jolanda, now 50, really loved when she was a child.

She said: “We played with them together.

“Samantha is Jolanda’s doll.

“Jolanda lives in a care home but sleeps on the bed in the kitchen when she comes home for holidays.”

And the money from selling doll clothes helps pay for Jolanda’s care.

Marie, from Kempton Park, South Africa, said: “I make about 30 outfits a day – that’s about 400 items a week.

“As I work I also talk to my dolls.

“Samantha is Jolanda’s baby but she stays with me because she needs to be looked after.

“And for me, she’s a piece of Jolanda I can still have every day.”

Her unique home enterprise allows her to combine her two big loves – dolls and making clothes.

Decades ago, after divorcing her first husband, the mum-of-three did a needlework course and started making and selling every-thing from wedding dresses to daywear in order to supplement her income as an office worker.

She also made little outfits for her own dolls purely as a hobby.

Between the dressmaking, she cared for Jolanda, who has never been able to walk.

She said: “I carried her from one place in the house to another.

“But 10 years ago my body started giving in.

“I’ve had five back operations and two hip replacements and Jolanda had to go to a care facility because I could no longer manage her alone.”

But even after that Marie was determined to keep working.

She said: “I’m not one for pottering about, reading or watching TV.

“Needlework is what I do.

“And anyway, I still have to somehow pay for my daughter’s necessities.”

Marie’s second husband, Rudi, 66, is often away from home due to his work as a fitter and turner on the mines.

He built her worktable and helped set up her “production line” – her sewing machines, plastic containers full of materials and accessories, tiny dress patterns laid out, fabrics, scissors, spools of thread and containers with pins.

She said: “It’s colourful chaos that fills every corner, but everything is exactly the way I want it.

“I switched to making doll clothes because it’s easier than making outfits for people.

“You can also cut and stitch more clothes from one roll of fabric.

“And I love what I do.”

She has five big clients she supplies doll clothes to wholesale, and they sell them in shops across the country.

She said: “Then there are also people who drive from as far as Kimberley to buy things for their children.

“I’m not expensive be cause I want every child to have little clothes for their dolls.

“They go as far away as South Africa, Australia and Europe.”

And her husband doesn’t mind.

He has his own passion – his classic Ford Cortina, which he works on when he’s home.

She said: “I always tell him his hobby costs us money, but mine actually makes money.

“I still love playing with dolls – it’s what my daughter and I have always done.

“I also had a friend who would come over and play with me and we held everything from doll tea parties to weddings over the years.

“The dolls still come out of their boxes sometimes.”

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