We are delighted to announce that registration is open for
Create Your Spirit Totem Doll & Everyone is Welcome!
create your power portrait
interior self the one who knows
Kids in Need of a Cuddle:Childrens Hospital Oakland
Community Arts Project curated Kristena West & Friends
2001-2002
Make Your spirit doll!
DIY Totems for the Wise & Wild
Come and make something Real.
The world can feel wild—but this is a call to remember who you are: a strong, creative, powerful woman. For centuries, women have crafted protection totems for their house, dolls for children as companions & mirrors of relating. For all women, Making, Creating and Stitching, is an act of Magic, our Healing, our Power and our Prayers.
Everyone is Welcome! If you can do dishes, you can craft! Beginners to Advanced crafters take it to the next level. Whether you're marking a transition, mending a wound, navigating challenging times, your hands intuit how to follow the threads to create for yourself a fabric figurine, that will become a healing talisman for your personal soul journey. We will focus our intent to empower ourselves as crafty women and to create a empowered totem for our home, altar or office.
Why Crafting Awakens our Deep Self?
Working with stitches, fabric, yarn, beads, and color does something powerful:
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It grounds us. The repetitive, tactile act of stitching is meditative, calming, and rhythmic—like a heartbeat.
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It ignites creativity. The moment we touch colorful yarns, fibers and fabrics, the Totem doll starts talking to us! It's a companion to journey into a new creative You! (Trust Me!)
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It connects us to our women's wisdom lineage. Every stitch echoes the hands of those before us—mothers, grandmothers, healers, herbalists, ancestors who created before us.
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It gives form to something unseen but deeply recognized; our Interior Soul-the One who Knows. Thoughts, emotions, and dreams take physical shape in color, fabric, and form.
This is why making a Spirit Doll is so much more than just “crafting.” It’s a deeply human act of creating a "being" a power object to reclaim your Powerful (divine!) Feminine.
Kristena West M.A.
I've been playing with Dolls all my life- started with Barbie's and Chatty Kathy, designing clothing and holding those "human figurines, they spoke to me of fun, play, whimsy as well as enduring companionship. I always wondered "What lives in these bodies? What gifts, hurts, stories? " I became a nationally recognized dollmaker (briefly) and a teacher and leader of WomanSpirit groups since 1990's.