Today, I received my lovely copy of Everything Alice – The Wonderland Book of Makes by Hannah Read-Baldrey and Christine Leech, and published by Quadrille. I am one of five proud winners of a competition run by The Make Lounge.
This charming new craft book is full of delightful things to make and do, using inspiration from Alice in Wonderland. 50 different projects cover a wide variety of techniques and abilities. What makes the whole thing so enjoyable is the attention to detail, and how much fun has been had in the making of the projects and the book.
I was interested to see how a childhood story could be translated into relevant products for today’s crafting climate, and the authors have done a fantastic job, that carries the magic of the original story through into all varieties of activities. The projects that are now on my ‘to do’ list are the Red King Slippers, Playing Card Bunting and the Tea Cup Mad Hatter Hat. To accompany the book, there is a supporting website https://everythingalice.co.uk/ and I can see that Quadrille are running Alice themed events with the authors.
In order to find my creative drivers at CoolCrafting, I have been looking back at what childhood stories led me down the career path I chose, and I can pinpoint my interest in clothing and sewing back to The Little Girl and The Tiny Doll by Edward Ardizzone. A doll has been dropped into a supermarket freezer and the little girl who finds her makes tiny clothes . Perhaps my interest in food and cookery was spiked by the beautiful descriptions of Elnora’s lunchbox in A Girl Of The Limberlost by Gene Stratton Porter.
Looking through old fairy story books recently, I came across this beautiful illustration by Margaret Tarrant, for The Real Princess by Hans Anderson, and I was struck by how similar it is to the fabric cupboards that we crafters aspire to owning.
Is this where all our fabric hoarding habits stem from?
