Alice in Wonderland room box

I have never made room boxes based on literature (except Lord Asriel's study, and it was pure imagination since it is not described in the novel). Since I am a children's literature scholar it may seem natural to make scenes from children's books, but for some reason I don't find it tempting, maybe because it's too obvious or too limiting or whatever.

In September I am doing a workshop for teachers in conjunction with a big international conference on Alice in Wonderland. The workshop will be focused on perception of size and scale, and what can be better as a point of departure than a miniature scene? 

For most of her time in Wonderland, Alice is three inches high, which is approximately 1:12 scale. This is apparently not a coincidence, but reflects spatial cognition, that is, the ability of our brain to understand size and proportion. Our favourite miniature scale is within the cognitive “comfort zone”. It ensures that the miniature world is still recognisable and comprehensible. If the scale is significantly smaller, psychology says, it demands a considerable cognitive effort. We miniature makers know it by intuition. If we work with smaller scales, it takes more effort to "see" the scale. 

Anyway, I agreed to do this workshop some time ago, and as a first step I took an empty wine box (formerly nursery, formerly yarn shop) and put in some random doors I had from various projects. This is what the text says: 

Alice “found herself in a long, low hall, which was lit up by a row of lamps hanging from the roof. There were doors all round the hall, but they were all locked; and when Alice had been all the way down one side and up the other, trying every door, she walked sadly down the middle, wondering how she was ever to get out again”.

 

 The box was the right shape: long with low ceiling. I put in a 1:12 doll, but I also found a tiny doll - dollhouse-in-the-dollhouse doll - to represent Alice when she shrinks to fifteen inches, which in our scale is just over an inch. I also made a glass table with a bottle labeled "Drink me". 

Then I didn't do anything for a long time. I needed a larger doll to represent Alice when she grows to nine feet, or 0.75 feet in scale. She is taller than the ceiling, and I wanted to convey the sense of claustrophobia, the horror of being stuck in a small space, that is repeated throughout the book. I also realised that white doors on white walls didn't look good. It was tempting to paint doors in different colours, but I thought it would be too patchy and distracting, a beach-hut feeling. Instead, I tried various colours on the walls. And I also made "a row of lamps hanging from the roof". The lamps are tops of eyedrop containers. I made some additional doors in my three-layer technique.

 

Of course the three Alices do not co-exist, but a room box can tell a story containing several episodes. This is the first episode, featuring the middle doll:

“Suddenly she came upon a little three-legged table, all made of solid glass; there was nothing on it except a tiny golden key, and Alice's first thought was that it might belong to one of the doors of the hall; but, alas! either the locks were too large, or the key was too small, but at any rate it would not open any of them. However, on the second time round, she came upon a low curtain she had not noticed before, and behind it was a little door about fifteen inches high: she tried the little golden key in the lock, and to her great delight it fitted!”

I have hidden the little door in the corner, and it is easy to miss it because the large doors will attract more attention. You need to adjust your scaling, just as Alice. Unfortunately, Alice is too tall to go through the tiny door, but when she drinks from the magic bottle and shrinks, she is just the right size, like the smallest doll. But sadly, she has left the key on the table. I put the little doll under the table to show how futile her attempts to get the key are. Luckily, she finds a cake that says "Eat me" and grows to nine feet... and so it goes on. 

The three dolls do not look alike so I had to make them look more alike, and the only way was to give them similar clothes. I didn't want to follow the stereotypical Disney-Alice image with a blue dress and white apron (it is also historically incorrect). There are some illustrated versions of Alice that portray her in a green dress, and I had a nice piece of green fabric. This was a good test of scale! The big doll's dress was child's play, and it was easy to trim it neatly with lace. The middle doll took more time and effort, especially since I didn't want to take off her clothes and ruin them, so I put the new dress on top of the old one. The tiny doll's dress took five attempts, and I am still not quite happy. But at least I think you can see that it is supposed to be the same character. 

I have added some Alice-related items to the scene: chess pieces, the Queen of hearts, mice in different scales, a clock. I wanted to have a looking glass, but I cannot see where I could fit it in. I have some time to work on it. The workshop participants will be asked to create their own room boxes inspired by Alice's growing and shrinking. It wil be exciting to see what they come up with.

Doll makeover

After endless floor cutting I felt I wanted to do something else for a change. I was rummaging through my retro house to see if there was anything that should be moved into the new house (quite a lot), when two dolls caught my attention. I bought them a couple of years ago at a car boot sale for next to nothing, and they have been sitting stupidly in the drawing room looking very much out of place. I suddenly realised that I could make them new clothes and invite them to Womble Hall.

Here is the uncredibly ugly girl doll. Actually, when I stripped off her clothes she turned out to have breasts, so apparently she wasn't a girl doll at all, but a female doll in a smaller scale.

But she will be a girl doll, and for underwear, a Victorian girl would wear pantalets. I made those when I made clothes for Tilly the Dutch doll, so it was easy. I discovered afterwards that I had used the same piece of lace.

With Tilly, I was careful not to damage the doll, but with this one I used a drop of glue to hold the garment.

It took me some time to find a suitable fabric, and finally I found a skirt left over from another makeover, when I turned a souvenir doll into a Victorian lady. Since it was a full-length skirt it was enough to made both a short skirt and a bodice. I won't describe how I made the dress because it was straightforward.

 
My original idea was to make a pinafore to put over the dress. Victorian girls, even in affluent families, frequently had just one dress, and to protect it, they would wear a pinafore, which is something else than an apron, and I know all this because I recently attended a very interesting talk. However, I thought the dress was so pretty it was a shame to cover it, so we will pretend that this young lady has just arrived for a party, wearing her best.

What left me deeply dissatisfied was her hair. Most of my dolls are souvenir dolls wth "real" hair. I have never made hair, but I know people do it. I searched ebay and found lots of wigs (quite pricy) and a DIY kit that I added to my watch list, and then I went to Youtube. You can find anything on Youtube. For instance, this tutorial. It didn't look unsurmountably difficult, and anyway, it was worth a try. The tutorial suggested cotton thread, and I tried it, and it may be fine for a Barbie, but not for a Victorian girl. So I found a ball of yarn in my basket for mini-knitting. I didn't find anything in a suitable colour, so I had to cut bits from a multicolour ball. And then you need to split it into as many single threads as possible.

Next, you tie it in the middle and comb out as much as you can, literally "unspinning" it. You can see the difference on the right side here.

I forgot to take a picture of the rubber cap so watch the tutorial to see how to make it. The tutorial suggested a balloon, but I didn't have a balloon so I used the tip of an old rubber glove. (Must remember to buy balloons!). I assume that the reason for using a cap is that you cannot glue the wig direct onto the doll's head. I didn't try.

In this picture, the left-hand side is still not properly combed. By the way, I used a miniature comb from a Christmas cracker. For the very first attempt making a wig I think it is not bad at all. I know what mistakes I made, and will avoid them next time, but rather than doing it all over again I covered the faults with a hat.

Of course, a young Victorian lady would wear a bonnet rather than a hat, but I happened to have this hat that matches the dress. I will make a bonnet with the tiny bits of fabric left from the dress.

By now you have forgotten what the doll looked like to begin with, so here is for you to compare. I would never guess it was the same doll.

So here is the young lady, arriving for a party. I also think she adds a welcome colour spot to the interior.

 

Come back soon for the boy makeover. 

Miniature knitting

I used to knit a lot, but stopped at some point when the kids grew up and I got busy with other things. However, a yarn shop must naturally offer knitwear. I remember my great-grandmother had the smallest knitting needles (for socks and stockings) and a tiny crochet needle (for lace), but they have perished in my numerous moves, and probably I didn't see any value in them at the time. I would need those neenles now! I know I can buy some from ebay or perhaps even find them in the nearest supermarket, but for the time being I have to do with what I have. What I have is a bit of yarn that Julia has left behind and a pair of needles far too large for mini-knitting. I did try, but what looked like miniature while I was doing it looked gigantic when I put it into the room box. So I had to start all over again, split the yarn (and wow! I remembered the trick. It's easiest if there are two of you, but I only had myself) and use toothpicks for needles.

Did I swear over it? Yes, I did. Did I wish I had proper needles? Yes, I did. But I am too stubborn and too impatient to wait until I maybe have time to get proper needles. What was funny was that at one point I just could not remember how to close a row. If you have even done some knitting, can you imagine forgetting how to close a row? I was sitting there, staring at my work and wondering whether I was getting senile or whether it is indeed possible to forget how to do an elementary thing. Then my fingers remembered. Not the brain - it was all in the body.

After that, it was child's play to crochet a hat.

Hats

This is a very simple project. I used the inside of a chocolate box. The bows are from a hobby shop.

Music room

To tell the story of the music room box I first need to explain who I made it for and why, and the best way to do it is to go to my own blog. The box I made for Jane to say thank you was a combination of her music and sartorial interests.

To begin with, the box itself was a package from Phase Eight in which my pink jacket arrived. It took me some time to decide what wallpaper would be right, and eventually I had an epiphany: the paper bag from East. It had to be daring! I used a bit of paper flooring, but I left the ceiling as it was.

Then I put in a piano that I had had for some time, don't remember where it came from, and it was wrong scale, but it didn't teally matter here. I added a little table and a mirror - mirrors are always useful in miniature rooms.

I made an outfit that was almost exactly like the one Jane and I had bought and put it on a pink hanger. I also added some details: a clock (that I had before, made from a bottle cap) and a painting of our college, Homerton. I like such half-hidden messages: if you aren't from Homerton you won't know what building it is.

I made some music magazines and a magazine rack, from a broken necklace. I also did somethning I don't normally do: printed out some sheet music from the web. It's very hard to make sheet music in 1:12.

I had ordered an oboe from ebay. No way I could make an oboe that would feel satisfactory to give to an oboe player. And while I was waiting I kept adding to the room.

Dutch dolls

Dutch dolls are a very interesting kind of dolls that appear frequently in old children's books where they are almost always servants and second-rate as compared to the fine porcelain dolls. I had never seen a Dutch doll until I found two in an antique shop at Portobello Road in London.

This is a girl doll whom I named Tilly, after a Dutch doll in a book, Tilly's House.(You may have noticed that none of my other dolls have names). I used a soft fabric from a little girl's dress, kindly donated by her mother. I made the top first and decorated the sleeves and collar with lace.

 

  

Then I made pantalets

 

and a skirt with a lacy petticoat

 

So here is Tilly the Dutch doll

Tilly's boyfriend was a bit broken. I had to carve new pegs for his legs

But here they are, happy and whole, welcome to have tea in the drawing room with the other dolls.