Sandra Street had abandoned her childhood love for making dolls until her sister-in-law’s bridal shower inspired her to make a unique present.

“I thought, ‘What about making a bride and groom?’” she said.

After the bride-and-groom set turned out to be a big hit, the Pikesville woman knew it was time to start making dolls again, and to make them into a business.

Now Street, who retired from the National Security Agency after the Sept. 11 attacks, is selling her dolls online and is hosting her second workshop on rag-doll making at Irvine Nature Center in Owings Mills this Sunday.

She sews together each of the elongated dolls — some are 40 inches tall, and sell for $75 — and leaves them faceless, preferring to focus on designing their colorful, usually afrocentric or Caribbean-inspired outfits.

“It’s almost like dealing with a person,” she said of working with such tall dolls.

During her travels to New York, Washington and the Caribbean, Street picks out materials — doilies, beads, leather, colorful fabrics — from which to make the outfits.

She initially focused on making afrocentric dolls because “you could see so many dolls with big white eyes and big red lips when you see dolls being given to African-American children, and I wanted to get away from that.”

The sewing and decorating also proved to be consoling, helping her deal with grief after her mother and father died.

“The dolls kind of got me out of it,” she said.

It was her husband’s idea to start making very large dolls.

“The ones I do now are much more elaborate and much more sophisticated,” she said. “A lot of people display them in their homes like others do a statue or a wall hanging.”

What Street works on at any given time depends on her fantasies and interests.

“I never, ever make the same doll twice,” she said.

Street said she is now very interested in designing a doll from Egypt.

“It depends on the mood. My latest project is like Nefertiti.

She has also made some fantasy dolls, such as a “sexy” gray-haired lady named Hot Flash Fannie.

She’s also made historical dolls, such as a likeness of Benjamin Banneker, a prominent 18th century free African-American, for the Benjamin Banneker Historical Park and Museum, in Catonsville.

Street’s dolls have been sold at gift shops in the Baltimore Museum of Art, the American Visionary Art Museum in Baltimore and the Smithsonian Institution, in Washington, before Street decided to focus on selling them through her Web site, www.thebaltimoredollcompany.net.

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