Stella Playing Alice

If April is the month of rain, May is certainly a time for gardens.  Gardens bursting forth with rosebuds, all manner of greenery, and wildflowers.  For May is Wildflower Month.  And who do we find among the gardens of Spring?  Alice.  Alice searching relentlessly for a way to make sense of the world she's fallen into.  Alice scrambling through tall grasses, knocking on doors of strange houses and coming in contact with the most absurd and memorable characters ever!

After completing Stella's first adventures in getting a puppy and having a birthday, a request came in from Eloise (we'll refer to Heather's 12" Stella as Eloise, because that is her name), for an Alice playset.  In yellow.  There is never a character I more like to create for than Alice.  The challenge was to make a dress (remember, Stella is from the 1930's) for a dress that Mother would have made from one of her own.  With a petulant personality such as Eloise possesses, the playset had to include the story of the Duchess and her pig

baby.  Pots and pans and plates flying about by Cook who's had enough of the Duchess and the wailing baby who is sneezing constantly from a pot of soup having been too peppered.  Just another chapter in Alice's adventure in Wonderland.  

Classic, Tenniel Alice, is always in blue.  But he also did the Nursery Alice, and she was dressed in yellow.  This little ray of sunshine is perhaps my favorite, and I've only seen Alice's costume portrayed in yellow by two artists.  I've looked.  Tenneil and Maria Louise Kirk.  Several years ago, I made Alice Illustrated the dress conceived by Maria L. Kirk, and it remains a favorite.  Kirk's Alice falling down the rabbit hole, had Alice cradling a jar of marmalade as she tumbled downwards.  The jar along with a tailless pig by Steiff (prior to my needle felting days), completed the play set. Today, Eloise will cradle and nurse the Duchess's baby, while the Duchess races off to a game of croquet with the queen.   

Maria L. Kirk's version of Alice portrayed her in a yellow dress with a waist apron indicative of the decade she illustrated the book in (1904), while Tenniel's apron is full and boasts flutter sleeves and ties in the back.  Illustrators have tended to dress their Alice in their own contemporary time, selecting styles that reflect what a child would be wearing.  As you can see in Maria's work, the apron buttons on a band in the back at the waist.  

I mention these aprons because when I was designing for Eloise, I wanted to be somewhat true to the 30's while creating something unmistakably Alice.  As to the fabric I used, a dress worn by Mother that was worn out and washed too many times was the look I was after.  Hence, the very thin and light, or faded yellow cotton.  I washed it several times to remove the sizing and to give it a worn look. A properly ironed dress would still be desired, even if for play, therefore, if the dress appears new, its Mother's attempt at decorum.  

I used the same collar as was on the birthday dress but pointed the tips for a more traditional Alice look.  

Baby blue 2mm double faced silk ribbon edges the dress and the apron.  Why not?  Women sewed back then, and while silk ribbon may have been too expensive for a child's costume, it doesn't mean that Grandmother didn't have a stash of it on hand for special occasions.

For me, what sets this apron apart and makes it unique for Eloise (or the Stella dolls), are the pockets.  Big hands require big pockets!  And so, they take up a lot of space on the apron.  They are the perfect size should a Drink Me bottle ever find its way into one of them.

I considered purchasing one of those miniature glass Coke bottles, but wanted a 2 1/4" green one as it would have shown up well in the pocket.  However, they only made that size in clear, and the green were made at 2 1/2".  I fussed and pondered over this for days, finally deciding on no Drink Me bottle.  One can always be added later.  Why the Coke bottle?  What would a child scrounge up in the 1930's for a bottle to represent "the bottle".  A bootleg whiskey bottle was considered, but Mother would have pitched a fit discovering it.  Eloise gets in enough trouble as it is.

Detail of the back closure.  

You'll notice that I made the apron as a pinner apron.  These were worn by women who literally pinned this top portion to their blouse or dress.  For this costume, it was sewn on for ease of dressing.

I chose gold and white striped stockings for the playset because they do not match.  Remember, we make do with what we have on hand in the 1930s!  I especially wanted them a little saggy since her legs are so skinny.  

Lastly, the Alice shoes.  Heather had shown me some center buckle shoes that she had made for her 20" Connie Lowe dolls, and I wanted badly to try to make a pair for our dolls.  I didn't have my normal lambskin on hand for the job, so tried a leather that was a bit thicker.  The only hesitation after using the thicker leather, now that I have the feel for it, is getting the strap through the buckle.  A friend of mine uses a tiny magnet that attracts the metal in the buckle for closure, but this is her design, not mine.

Here we have Maisie modeling the Alice playset complete with the Duchess's pig baby.

Time to let the little snorter down and do what little pigs do!

One of the photos I used as a model for the features.

Upon completion of the dress, I asked Heather whether or not she had shoes to use with this outfit.  She did not.

Designing, mulling over what do to, how to do it, finding the right fabrics and trims to carry the design through, takes much effort and I was so hoping that the dress would suffice on its own.  What was I thinking?  Then again, I never do something halfway.  I was just tired and had so many other things going on.  But I'm glad the request for shoes and a piggy came in.

I'd never needle felted a pig before, and she was willing to wait, so I took out the needles and wool and began.

I used the Steiff piggy I had as a model for the body size and shape since Alice Illustrated and the Stella dolls are of similar size.

As mentioned earlier, when it came to features, it was back to the online drawing board, looking for photos to use in examples for pig ears, snouts and the mouth.  There doesn't appear to be a noticeable upper lip to a pig, but more of a lower extension of the snout.  

With the Steiff, the features of the ears, mouth and end of nose were cut out from felt and sewn on.  These give the illusion of "pig" and are adorable.  They also used blue eyes with black pupils on their pig, but pigs have brown or black eyes.  So more accuracy was the direction I took the Duchess's pig baby.

The baby bonnet was essential.

I've made several White Rabbits and a myriad of other Alice characters, and I think the pig, in the end, was the easiest of them to make.  The tail was fun to create.  

It takes me almost as long to needle felt a critter as it does to design and sew a dress.  And of course that depends on what critter I'm making, but the effort is the same.  I wish I were faster at this, yet I hope my work shows the love and commitment I put into it.

And that pretty much concludes the creative journey for Eloise's Alice playset.  If its Alice, I'm on board!  In fact, the next project is dressing another doll as Alice for my friend, Betsy.  She gave me an 8" porcelain and cloth Gail Wilson doll to dress for her.  This one will be in Tenniel classic blue.

I do have to take a few days to get some things done around the house, and the days are warming up beautifully for taking my kayak out on the lake.  Many if not most of my creative ideas are conceived while I'm out in nature.  It gives me time to think, away from all the distractions of daily life.  And my dog, Brighton, does love his hikes.

May is 31 days.  The moon will be full on the 12th, and before you know it, Summer Solstice will be here. Enjoy the beautiful days of May and find time to chase down a few dreams in a garden.

Alice Illustrated in Maria L. Kirk

A pig baby?  Is that so!