Australian sales for the Q’ewar dolls are carried out by Annie Angle, the Australian Distributor for the project through her business Little Chips Handcrafts as well as through Saffron Waddick and Natalia Perera who both volunteered through at the project. More information below.
Annie Angle
Annie who owns Little Chips Handcrafts became the Australian Distributor for the Q’ewar dolls in 2009. Annie has played a part in initiating the creation of a few new designs of dolls/toys made by the women at the project. Some of these ideas have come from toys her own children have had along with those made by herself and friends.
Buying a doll
If you would like to buy a doll please contact Annie (details below) or visit Little Chips Handcrafts online store or her new store at Shop 5, 372 Mount Dandenong Road, Sassafras, Victoria, 3787.
or you can buy direct through Little Chips Handcrafts Facebook page. Coming soon a Face Book page just for the Q’ewar Project Australia.
You can also view links to the right of this page (Large, Medium, Baby doll etc) to see many of the dolls we stock. If you see one you would like please Email Annie or call 0457 413015 to make an order. Payment by: Paypal, efpos, direct bank deposit, cheque’s, money orders and credit card. Shopping cart soon to be added to this website so you can buy direct here.
Wholesale orders
Annie sells the Q’ewar dolls wholesale through Little Chips Handcrafts to several shops throughout Australia. We can also sell into schools and kindergartens at a lower than retail cost. Please get in touch if you are interested. We would love to have you on board. please click here for a list of our current stockists.
Natalia Perera
“Natalia and her husband Fabio , run a yoga training centre (www.saffronrose.com) . Natalia and Fabio help with the promotion of the project and sales of the dolls through their business. Natalia visited the project recently and spent time finding out more about the project and ways she could continue to help. By the spring of next year Natalia plans to visit the project again, along with a group of her students. You read more about this trek on Natalia’s website..details below.
Natalie has also written an article entitled “Warriers in the Andes” which is about Julio and Lucy’s journey to set up the Q’ewar Project in Andahuaylillas, in the Cusco region of Peru. The article is inspiring, beautifully written and will give you an insight into how incredibly unique and special this project is. Thank you to Natalie for sharing this with everyone. Read the whole article… You can also download the article as a PDF
Saffron Wadick – Volunteer at the Q’wear Project
Saffron has been a volunteer at the Q’ewar Project on two occasions. Saffron is a Steiner Kindergarten teacher and her dedication to both her teaching and the Q’ewar Project is amazing.
Saffron recently returned to Australia in June 2013 after her second time at the project teaching in the kindergarten and also learning how to make the dolls and knit the clothing. If you want to read more about Saffron and her travels including her visit to the Q’ewar Project in Peru on her blog at http://saffronmexico.blogspot.com.au/. There are many more beautiful photos of her time at the project and her time spent with the children in the kindergarten.
Below the photos is also a beautiful piece written by Saffron entitled “The Home of the Most Beautiful Dolls in the World”. It is about her experience at the project. This article was published in “Star Weaving” ( the Steiner Early Childhood magazine) during her time at the project.
Saffron returned to her teaching at the Gleanean Steiner School in New South Wales (http://www.glenaeon.nsw.edu.au/). Saffron continues to support the Q’ewar Project by selling the dolls into her school community. Saffron will no doubt return to the project at some point in her life to do more volunteer work.
Saffron recently took some of the Q’ewar dolls to the Vital Years conference (http://vitalyears2013.blogspot.com.au/) in Sydney. Little Chips Handcrafts attended the conference last year in Victoria and the response to the project and the beautiful dolls was incredibly warming and wonderful. It is fantastic that Saffron was able to take the dolls back to this yearly conference in 2013.
If you or someone you know would like to do volunteer work at the Q’ewar Project in Peru please contact us through our contact page on this website.
Photos below taken by Saffron and others working at the project and used with permission.
The Home of the Most Beautiful Dolls in the World by Saffron Wadick
After working at Glenaeon Rudolf Steiner Preschool in Sydney, I left for an adventure and landed for the second time in a little Quechua speaking village, Andahuaylillas, in the Cusco region of Peru. Here at the top of the village, overlooking the magnificent Andes Mountains, is the home of The Q´ewar Project, an inspiring anthroposophical social project.
As a foreigner from Sydney, living here is idyllic. So close to nature, surrounded by the spectacular mountains, life is slow and the people are always friendly and polite. But the reality of life here is far from idyllic. After living here for two years, Julio, a Waldorf art teacher,and his wife Lucy, who herself grew up in a Quechua village, saw the many difficulties in the lives of the villagers, in particular the women. Difficulties of poverty, domestic violence and alcoholism are common to life in Andahuaylillas. With very little education and opportunities for employment, the women live trapped in the circumstances of their lives.
With a strong intention to improve the lives of the women, in 2002, Julio and Lucy initiated The Q´ewar Project. They started by employing three local women and in their little house, taught the women to make Waldorf dolls. Since then, the project has expanded enormously. There are now forty seven women and four men working daily and twenty women who come from the surrounding farms on Saturdays.
The women and men are free to choose their days and hours of work, which allows them to manage their family life and other activities in complimentary. Each year, Julio and Lucy take the women to a new, beautiful place in Peru. Despite living four hours from one of the Seven Wonders of the World, when the group went to Machu Picchu, it was the first time for every single employee. They also receive visitors from all over the world such as paint therapists, an osteopath and specialists in natural medicine, who treat the women and men.
The dolls are made with all natural materials sourced in Peru, the clothes and hair are made with alpaca yarn. The care and precision for each part of the process never ceases to amaze me. Each head is weighed twice during the process, when finished each piece of clothing is brushed with a toothbrush and then washed by hand, there is even different underwear for boys and girls depending on which clothes they are wearing. Each doll takes at least five days to make, the curly hair alone takes an entire day.
In Sydney I thought I was quite a good knitter and here at the project I often pass the afternoons knitting with the women. The women knit amazingly fast, while chatting and laughing, without looking at their work. They are so accustomed to the best quality knitting that I end up passing much more time undoing what I have knitted than actually knitting. I no longer think that I am quite a good knitter.
On Saturdays the women living further in the farmland arrive with the wool from their sheep. They clean, card and spin the wool all by hand and dye the wool using local natural dyes. Four years ago, Wawa Munakuy meaning ´´for the love of children´´ in Quechua, The Qéwar Project´s Waldorf kindergarten was born. Most of the children who come to the kindergarten are living in poverty, in very basic, sparse houses with none or very little toys and rarely leave the house with their family. Here they are very lucky to be part of a Waldorf kindergarten and are given many lovely experiences they would otherwise never have. I enjoyed four months assisting in the kindergarten; sharing ideas, translating morning circles and stories, talking with the families and developing an understanding of the lives of the families and the teachers which are so different from mine. As all the children will go to local schools and need to pass an entrance exam to enter the primary school, it is necessary that they also have to learn some reading, writing and mathematics. From the start this has been a difficulty, but of course they are working on a solution, The Q´ewar Project has recently bought land to build a Waldorf Primary School.
There is also an afternoon program for the women´s children. The children are given help with their homework, a space and friends to play with and music lessons twice a week. One seven year old boy said, ´´I wish I can be here all the time, so I can always play´´. As the project continues to expand, another plot of land has been purchased further in the farmland. Currently it is being constructed in a similar design to the current project to allow more women living in the farmlands an opportunity to be a part of the Qéwar project.
The purpose of the project has never been to create beautiful dolls. Julio says ´´The purpose of the project is to create a community and to allow the opportunity for each person within the community to develop as a human being. It is only when people have a stable economic situation and live in humane conditions that they are able to think outside of their own lives and develop a consciousness for others and their own individual thoughts. The dolls will be for sale at the Vital Years Conference, with all the sales going towards the Qéwar Project.