THE DOLLMAKER

When Margaret Miller was a little girl growing up in Chicago, dolls were a luxury her family scarcely could afford. Now that she's 82 she's surrounded by them.

Depending on the time of year, up to 200 dolls might line the walls of the basement where she and her 50-year-old Singer sewing machine turn cloth and thread into familiar characters from storybooks.

The Christmas season has depleted Miller's current cache of dolls, but Little Bo Peep, Mother Goose, Wee Willie Winkle and, of course, Santa and Mrs. Claus are still to be found, mounted on little racks along the walls.

Also Mary of little lamb fame, Little Miss Muffett and the spider, Rock-a-bye-Baby, Old Mother Hubbard, Jack and Jill, Georgie Porgy and his tearful girlfriend, Peter Peter Pumpkin Eater, Lucy Lockett and more.

Over the past 20 years of doll-making, Miller has developed 28 different patterns for the characters in her Story Book Dolls collection. It is labor and love.

"I just fell in love with them at my age," she sighs. "I guess it's a second childhood."

The stuffed dolls, which come with a removable costume, sell for $9, a price Miller knows she could increase. "But I sell a lot more this way," she said.

Miller had made only a few dolls for her own enjoyment when she showed them years ago at a centennial held in Lutesville (now Marble Hill), where she and her late husband, Lester, once had a farm.

Somewhat to her surprise, people wanted to buy the dolls.

"My husband said, `You can make another one,'" Miller recalled. "That's what I've been doing, making another one for 20 years.

Actually, she makes four at a time. Each pattern consists of 24 pieces. Miller uses her fancy sewing machine upstairs to embroider the dolls' faces.

Each one has the appropriate nursery rhyme pinned to her dress or to his pants.

A non-driver who was widowed in 1982, Miller has reduced her craft show appearances to the Jour du Fete in Ste. Genevieve, the Christmas Arts and Crafts Bazaar at the Show Me Center and a few events at the Black Forest Villages.

Some people collect her dolls. "One woman in St. Louis told me she'd bought one every year for 20 years," Miller said. Children who grew up with one of Miller's dolls are now buying them for their own offspring.

Her own children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren are scattered about the country now. But her dolls are always close.

"Some of them I get pretty attached to," she says.