The Stitches Doll Project
A new website for a nonprofit's archive of handmade dolls
nonprofit archive site · Freelance
The Stitches Doll Project began in 1999 as a way for women affected by HIV/AIDS to tell their stories through handmade dolls. The collection grew to include experiences of violence, bleeding disorders, and other challenges. I'm redesigning and rebuilding the project's website for its founder, Kathy.
- role
- Design & development
- with
- Freelance
- when
- 2026 – present
- stack
- Astro, TypeScript, CSS, Pages CMS, Cloudflare Pages
the redesign
The visual direction is warm and handmade, and the photographs of the dolls do most of the work. The homepage opens with the dolls and leads to their stories, the project's history, and ways to get involved.
collection
The stories are the reason to visit, so the site is organized around the collection. I reworked the sitemap so events are groupings within the gallery instead of pages of their own. The gallery filters the collection and lists stories in rows, longer stories expand in place, and every doll has its own page.
implementation
Astro builds the site from typed content collections. Pages CMS gives Kathy an editing interface, and Cloudflare Pages hosts it. The rebuild is in development, and the public site hasn't been replaced yet.