Okay. I was going through a kind of tough, personal time in the months of November and December. Not that I in any way let it deter me from enjoying the holidays, but it slowed me down and I just couldn't get with the program. Sometimes you need to grieve and allow yourself time to heal and slowly find the sunshine again. I read a lot. And I was reading a ton during these months. While looking for more books, I thought I'd check and see if Jan Brett had done anything lately. Wow. Had she ever. Alice in a Winter Wonderland. When it arrived, I was simply bowled over.
First of all, where did she get the idea? While visiting Alaska and on top the Mendenhall glacier, she spotted a perfect round hole that spiraled down through the ice. And the entire story of Alice in a Winter Wonderland spun out from there. The incredible thing about this book is that she took every single important Tenniel image and reimagined it into both the ice age, the contemporary arctic, and native artifacts. If you're a fan of Jan Brett's, you know that her stories are animal based, and she did an exceptional job of bringing all the original critters and creatures to life in an imagined arctic setting.
For instance, the Cheshire Cat was reimagined as a saber-toothed tiger. The pages, or soldier cards are reimagined as puffins painting, not the roses, but arctic tundra cottongrass. Again, if you're a fan of Brett's, buy this book. I've been lost in its pages for a month and a half, and I still haven't seen everything. Her artwork is exemplary on any given day, but she pulled out the stops with "out-of-this-world imagination" on this one. I still can't get over how beautiful the card deck is. It features a yak as the central figure, a puffin, goat, moose and sled dog at the corners. I hope you'll click on these photos to see them up close and better.
She also drew Alice as the real child, with short, dark hair. Bonus points on that count! So, I knew without question that my Alice Illustrated needed
a new costume. I must have sixteen costumes now inspired by different artists who've illustrated the books over the years. I think this will be a favorite because it is so unique. And while creating the costume, I couldn't wait to share it with you.
First off, we had to deal with the wig problem. I must have seven wigs for Alice Illustrated, to reflect the look of the different illustrations, but I did not have one in the real Alice hair style. I bought three. A couple of Global wigs and an old Monique. None were quite right, so I took out my sharp little scissors and snipped one of them into the best rendition I could make. Most of the illustrations in the book show Alice without her hat on so I really felt it necessary to make sure I had a wig as close to Jan's illustration as possible.
Next was selecting a thin velveteen from my stash to create her fur trimmed tunic. I just happened to have this pretty muted gray-blue that I'd picked up at a needle works shop some years ago when I
was learning to needle felt. The quilting squares of velveteen had been hand dyed. I bought them all. Lucky me, because this blue was just the right hue and weight.
The tunic itself is a simple pattern and that was good because all the work was in the fur trim. If you look at the illustration (bottom of this post), of Alice falling down the ice hole, you'll notice that the tunic is lined in a red tartan print. Lucky me, I just happened to have a piece that would work. Seriously. I need to use what I have as I've been unapologetically buying fabric for years and years.
The fur trim is that lovely teddy bear fur. I had to use scraps of what I'd purchased some time ago, because it is so soft and has a very low pile. I wish I could find this again. I did buy another half yard for this project thinking it was the same stuff, but it wasn't. That's I how accumulate so much of my stash. Mistakes!
While I have a wide range of yellow through gold through brown colors of nice DMC embroidery thread, I didn't quite have an "old gold" color. So I used a yellow closest to a gold for the tassel. Next time I'm in town, I'll stop in at Michaels and see if I can do better in a color match. But! The bright gold looks pleasing displayed with the other various colors, especially, those in the puffin.
Ah yes. The mukluks. Mukluks are soft boots traditionally made of reindeer (caribou) skin and are worn by Indigenous Arctic peoples. A fine illustration of them is shown (also) very clearly in Alice's tumble. There are two straps to each boot, cinched by little buckles. You can see the second and top buckle in the photo above showing the red tartan lining.
Alice's mukluks are made from moleskin or faux suede.
Detail of completed outfit.
Did I mention "puffin"?
I'd considered making the owl queen of hearts, but after needle felting the puffin's card placard's, I decided the queen's placard cards would be too difficult to make. Or way more work than I wanted to add to this project.
No matter. I had great fun making the puffin!
There are several types of puffins, but the Atlantic puffin is the cutest and most colorful. They are sturdily built little fellows with thick necks and short wings and tails. They fly but also swim with their webbed feet to depths of 200 feet.
I was also partial to making one as I'd thoroughly enjoyed Jenny Colgan's Mure book series, where Polly lives in lighthouse and has a pet puffin that comes with her to the bakery where she bakes and sells her bread.
While considering the size of the puffin, I read that from beak to tail, they can run 12" long. Standing, they're about 8", but since this is a special storybook puffin who paints cottongrass, I chose to use the 12" as a base. I discovered that a young girl of 10 years, in 1860, would have been 4' 2" in height on average. Doing the math, that would put the puffin at about 3", so that's what I aimed for.
I spent a great deal of time making the puffin. I don't needle felt often enough to feel confident each time I begin to make something new. Sometimes the simplest wire armature or frame is the way to go, especially when you're dealing with a detailed needle felt of this size.
I printed off photo images of Atlantic puffins (including the one above), of the beak close up and the wide webbed feet and worked closely with these to achieve the results.
I'd intended to needle felt him as in the photo shown and add the card placards front and back. But something was missing.
The puffins were painting the cottongrass red. Bucket of red paint. Paintbrushes held in the tip of their wings. The puffin needed wings that weren't tucked close to his body, but animated.
I put a little needle felted paint brush in his wing tip and made a needle felted bucket of red paint. I've needle felted a basket before, but never a bucket. This was interesting for me. I taught myself something new. It was only on deciding to do this that it came to me exactly how to make one.
Needle felting takes hours and hours of time to get the wool fibers tight and the object sculpted to your satisfaction. It's not easy. And maybe that's why I enjoy it. The satisfaction of sculpting from wool fibers - especially in miniature! Creating something from scratch.
At one point, before I added the card placards, he was resting, propped up behind my felting block with only his head showing, looking at me, as in this photo to right, and I knew I'd done good. He was a cute-as-can-be puffin. Polly's puffin.
The cards were another matter. I have done cards, when I created the Alice inspired by the work of David Delamare, but these cards were tiny. I had to find a different approach. I chose the red two of diamonds for its simplicity and brightness of color. The number 2's are embroidered, and the diamonds are sewn on tiny diamonds cut from a wool felt sheet. I was going to embroider the diamonds, but on the needle felted card, I couldn't get a good shape.
Detail of the puffin's back.
Finally, and before I finished with the hat, I made a couple of cottongrass stems painted red for Alice to hold. These were made from shaved pipe cleaner pieces wrapped in light green floral tape with a needle felted "puff" added.
Cottongrass is food for migrating snow geese, caribou and their calves. The Inuit use the seed heads as wicks in their oil lamps. It is one of the most widespread flowering plants found in the northern hemisphere and tundra regions.
As I studied the birds and flora of Alaska, I began to yearn to visit it one day. Just studying Jan's book and reading up on all the different animals and artifacts she drew in it kept me entertained for hours. And there will be more. I'm fascinated with this book.
They say you learn history from dolls through how they're dressed, their hair styles, the time periods in which they were created, but I find that a lot can be learned through beautifully created children's books as well. The smallest thing that intrigues or draws interest, can lead to hours of study and learning.
I haven't worked on a project like this in a while and this is what I truly love doing. Immersing myself wholly in a project that enriches me. I'm not sad that its over but energized once again to keep going. Tomorrow when I wake up, it will be February. Winter has returned and I'm looking forward. Always forward.
I hope you'll enjoy the illustrated pages from Alice in a Winter Wonderland that I saved off from Amazon. The glacial rabbit hole was shown on its side in the book, but I've upended it for you in this journal posting.
Wishing you a Happy New Year and lovely Valentine's Day!
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| Arctic Cottongrass |
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| The chart from 1860 |
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