Down the Rabbit Hole

 sometimes being a crafter an idea gets hold and you just have to go with it even if where it leads you feels a bit like being Alice after a white rabbit.

Some years ago now at work, a charity day was planned and the theme was Mad Hatter's Tea Party.

With prizes for the best hat.

I found a hat in a charity shop that had a little ceramic tea pot on the crown and a cup and saucer on the brim and a black bow and feather to the side. A perfect starting spot.

I added playing cards (which had been a serendipitous inclusion in a sale brochure for ace bargains or something like that) . Sadly I was unable to attend on the day and the hat was relegated to the loft., it has been keeping the Christmas decorations company.

So when the theme resurfaced but this time as a Relief Society activity at Church the hat also resurfaced.

It should have been a simple case of re-sticking the playing cards which had come loose but a conversation about the rabbit and the pocket watch had me thinking how to add one to my hat (a pocket watch not a rabbit at this stage). A real one would have been far to heavy, that little tea pot and cup are heavy for a hat to begin with.

If you have visited with me before you know I like to reuse things when I can. So the bottom of a Cadbury's Little Pot Of Joy looked just the right size. Cut it off with a craft knife, covered it in tin foil and then a nice sticky label with the clock face on. Foil covered tooth pick for the winder, some random chain and pocket watch for hat.

I was rather pleased with the look of it and the drape of the chain over the tea pot down into the cup.

You would think that would be sufficient, sensibly that would be quite enough for one hat. 

However, this is me, and I started thinking that the side with the cards was a little bare at the bottom and needed something to balance it out. I thought about it, jam tarts perhaps what did I have that would be a quick tart? Most things I thought of were too heavy or would take too long as at this point there were only a few days to go.

What about Alice, I contemplated using a peg and some paint and paper, but that sounded stiff and I could not get my mind to play it through. 

So it became make a little doll Alice. Wadding trimmings, old tights, scraps from the quilting.

And a little doll, not Alice just yet. This is the first time I have tried this and I was quite pleased with how the wadding in the tight fabric moulded into the head and face with some sculpting stitches.

The arms just made with rolled tight material contracted a little and felt a little short in proportion  but given this was without a pattern that there were arms was a good start as far as I was concerned. I did push a little bit of wire (recycled from a used up ring bound note pad) into the arms as an afterthought so I could position them.

I did consider adding the hair using embroidery floss, but then a little ball of pale yellow wool caught my eye and I thought that might be just a bit quicker. Time becoming an ever more important factor now as this was now the evening before the event.

I am sure that sewing on the wool was indeed faster than the thread would have been, not so sure about brushing it out , styling it and getting the Alice band in place. I used white ribbon as I had some very thin white ribbon which did double duty for the bow on the apron and the Alice band.

The legs were scraps of white around more wadding scraps .The shoes were drawn on with black permanent marker and that was by far the quickest and easiest part of this process. The legs also had wire pushed in to make them less floppy. Here she is on the hat.

On the day, the hat stayed solidly in place on my head, Alice stayed put on the hat (used double sided tape to hold her on) the chain on the watch moved a bit and the watch came unstuck and was repositioned into a loop of the bow. (Thank you BFF)

As you make have guessed from the previous paragraph my BFF was also in attendance, with her own embellished hat. Not sure if she will blog about that herself, if so I will add a link when she does. And if not perhaps I will update with images of her hat.

We had a lot of fun, riddles to answer, a getting to know you game, lovely food  and some interesting spiritual lessons referencing some of the lessons Alice learned on her journey.

The new experience of making the little face was enjoyable, the hair less so (and it is a good job she not  made to be viewed from behind). Indeed as she was intended only as a decoration the join of the legs to the body is basic, there are raw edges under there and on the back and the wire is by no means invisibly secured. She is certainly not meant to be a toy.  However some of the techniques I may try again at some point with less time constraints and a more durable finish. Should the right project arise.

And as for the hat, at least it got a day out in this incarnation before heading back to the loft, and there is space on the back of the hat next time this theme comes up and I head back down the rabbit hole of I could just make rather than settling for it as it is!  At least that is one thing I know about myself.