The making of Eliza Loverige: by Sophia

This is me and my doll Eliza. In Grade 4 Social Studies we learn about Canada's early settlers and I read the book Dear Canada: Winter of Peril - The Newfoundland Diary of Sophie Loverige.

I wanted to do something more interesting than just a paper report, so I made this doll. In the book, Sophie has a doll named Eliza just like this. I did research about what dolls in the 1700s would be like. Sometimes they had entire rooms just for little girls dolls! The head for her doll would have been made of china, or wax, or wood. But we couldn't do something as fancy as that, so we just made a plain old rag doll.

We used instructions from a website called www.instructables.com. Here is a link to the instructions I used. 

Why the doll was important in this story is because the doll Eliza in the story sort of connected Sophie to an aboriginal girl Sophie saw. The girl was a Beothuk girl. The Beothuk is a tribe that was the only tribe that was completely wiped out by Residential Schools.  Off the white board! (If you want to know what I mean by "off the white board", watch my report on Residential Schools here.)  Sophie gave her doll Eliza away to the little Beothuk girl.

My Mum is helping my type this and she wrote "Sophia" instead of "Sophie" and I said remember it's Sophie, not Sophia. Then I said, "I can't give my doll away to a Beothuk, because there is none left." And that makes me feel very sad.

I loved making the doll because I love sewing. I feel like I am getting better at using the sewing machine. The arms and legs were the hardest part. I thought it was really cool I was making a doll. I keep Eliza on my bed every day.