Our Story

My sister Bettina and I have been sewing, embroidering, and generally making things since childhood. Our grandmother was a seamstress whose needlework skills enabled her to open Katherine’s Fine Embroidery in NYC not long after arriving from Greece. She gave us our first instruction.  I was so young I can barely remember, but I recall concentrating so hard on the cross stitches that I didn’t notice I was sewing through the fabric into my own dress!  We recently recreated the childhood Humpty Dumpty stuffed toy she had made for us and all of her grandchildren.  Humpty Dumpty was too much of a mouthful at our young age so we just called ours “Dundys”.  We decided to make new Dundys for our children and nieces (and ourselves!).  I embroidered the faces and Bettina sewed them together.  We had so much  fun in the collaboration we decided to continue our efforts on further projects.

In 2020 the Covid lockdown gave us the bandwidth to launch the joint enterprise that we had been contemplating for a long time.  Our idea was to create and sell beautiful and useful handcrafted items (such as lavender sachets and whimsical one-of-a kind pin cushions) and donate the money to charity.  The impact of the pandemic on our world brought many things into focus.  Supporting mental health charities seemed the obvious choice considering the state of the world and all we see around us.  Making these handcrafted items helps feed our souls and maintain our sanity, but now they can also help others.  

Since launching the site in February 2020, we’ve donated to a different charity nearly every month including National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI), the JED Foundation, and the SIMS Foundation, and Mental Health America (MHA) among others. Read our blog to read about this month’s donation target in the fight for better mental health support in this country, and join us!

We are The Dundy Sisters.

Ophelia Papoulas & Bettina Papoulas Bierly