In January 2025 I was permitted to use the display cabinet in our local library for a few weeks during the annual literary festival when I shared the Dress a Sasha displays from the 2024 and 2012 festivals. I combined the display with a literary treasure trail within the library for children as part of the literary festival which helps our town brighten up a dark month in the depths of the English winter. See Sasha Exhibition for the local library
This January, in collaboration with the literary festival organisers, the library staff, the town council and the local gardening group Stony in Bloom (who usually display their trophies in it), once again I am using the display cabinet for the literary festival. I swapped out the Christmas display a couple of weeks ago and set up displays with the following themes: traditional party games and a beloved fairy story.
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| The 2026 literary festival display |
The traditional party games display features two games:
Game 1: Pin the tail on the donkey with Eeyore as the donkey, featuring my younger daughter's 2017 Dress a Sasha entry when we attended the Sasha Doll Festival in Washington DC. As it happens, this ties in nicely in 2026 with centenary of Winnie-the-Pooh coming into print (the first short story was printed in a newspaper 24 December 1925 and the book Winnie-the-Pooh was published in 1926). The clothes Laura, Edmund and baby Amy were wearing featured Winnie-the-Pooh characters redrawn from Ernest Shepard's designs by my younger daughter then printed on fabric by my sister's company. I was able to draw upon this for the literary treasure trail clues.
Game 2: all our babies playing Pass the Parcel, with crumpled wrapping paper and general merriment.
The beloved fairy story was chosen by the library manager - she challenged me to the Elves and the Shoemaker. I had grown up with the 1965 Ladybird book version of this story with wonderful painted illustrations which brilliantly tell the story. So of course I wanted to recreate those illustrations using a pair of Gregor dolls by Sasha Morgenthaler.
Recreating that scene on the front cover of The Elves and the Shoemaker meant finding a suitable pair of shoes which would approximate the style and colours of the shoes in the picture. I looked online and of course couldn't find anything suitable which I could just buy and not adapt. I went to our local cobbler and key cutting shop (yes, in this day and age we really do have a cobbler in our town who do shoe repairs - they're fantastic) and asked if they had anything but they don't make shoes, however they suggested finding a good condition pair in a charity shop and painting them. They also kindly consented to loan me a pair of vintage shoe lasts to include in the display (one was painted in bright stripes). So I scoured the local charity shops (the town has several) and found a pair of pumps which needed their heels building up higher but were roughly the right design and set to work on them.
I built up the heels with 3 layers of thick card cut to shape.
Then I started painting the shoes using acrylic paint.
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| The heels built up with thick cardboard glued on, and starting to paint |
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| Starting to paint the green |
I had to paint inside the shoes too plus hide the shoe size on the soles to make them less modern. For the heel which was to have the nail, I painted nail heads and used a real panel pin for the nail being hammered in. For the shoe having its yellow braid stitched on, I used thick thread stitched from inside the shoe to the outside, then threaded a large darning needle onto it for the elf to hold.
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| Close up of the elves hammering and sewing the shoes |
I made the outfits for the elves from scratch. I found fabric in my stash which had the right rustic look and was reasonably close in colour to those pictured (for one elf I didn't have a washed out yellow so I used a cream colour instead). I had to make their clothes look ragged, so didn't need to sew any edging seams and snipped jagged edges all the neck, arm and bottom edges of their tops and the bottom of their shorts to allow a bit of fraying. The lighter colour top has two patches sewn on the back and a hole in the shoulder to roughly copy the illustration.
I knitted pointy caps for the elves then made ears (modelled over their real ears) from Milliput which I painted after it had dried then glued them on temporarily using tacky glue (it won't harm their vinyl ears, it was only a spot for each of them).
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| close up of elf ear worn by Trendon Elliott |
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| close up of elf ear worn by Nicholas James |
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| Trendon Elliott sewing the braid on the shoe |
I had painted the handle of the hammer to look like wood (it is an Our Generation doll hammer) and made a miniature pointer from the leftover blob of Milliput with a needle pushed into it, then painted when dry.
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| the miniature pointer |
I also made the candle holder and candlestick (from metal button and painted Milliput) and put this on a stump of wood (I didn't have time to make a three legged stool as depicted in the illustration). The flame on the candle was made from clippings of tinsel, my elder daughter says it looks like it is about to explode!
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| The candle and candle stick on the stump of wood |
Setting up the display in the cabinet took about 90 minutes. Four of the dolls were in the Christmas display (Laura, Edmund, Davy and Nina) and needed to be in the Pin the tail on the donkey display, so they had a quick change of clothes at the library. The other four dolls from the Christmas display came home with me.
I set up the two party games first on the higher shelf which is where I already had the Stony in Bloom bunting from the Christmas display (I took down the Christmas bunting). I put up the Happy Birthday banner my younger daughter had made for her 2017 Dress a Sasha entry. The shelf looked quite crowded once I'd finished the party display as every one of our babies were included, though baby Amy is in the Pin the tail game while all the others are playing Pass the parcel.
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| Pass the Parcel being eagerly played by 9 Sasha babies |
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| Mabel, Leo and Daisy playing Pass the Parcel |
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| Theo with a book while playing Pass the parcel beside babies Nina and Davy (who had a quick change after the Christmas display) |
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| L-R: Nomalizo, Ebony, Robin, Mabel, Leo and Daisy playing Pass the Parcel |
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| Pin the tail on the donkey |
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| Back view of baby Amy playing with her rattle and books |
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| Laura guiding Edmund as he tries to pin the tail on Eeyore |
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| Edmund wearing his Eeyore shirt and the blindfold while holding the tail |
In her 2017 Dress a Sasha entry, my daughter had used a vintage book just below the birthday banner. One of the library staff suggested that the pop-up book about Eeyore's tail needed to be open and I couldn't put it under the birthday banner in the display cabinet because it wouldn't be seen. So I put it a space at the front corner of the cabinet which was not being used by either game and opened it to show Christopher Robin pinning the tail back onto Eeyore while Winnie-the-Pooh and Piglet watch.
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| The pop-up book open for the pin the tail scene |
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| Christopher Robin pins the tail back on Eeyore while Winnie-the-Pooh and Piglet watch |
Then I concentrated on the Elves and the Shoemaker. I had raided our workshop for some leather pieces of various colours and thickness which are piled up behind the elves and raided my collection of vintage wooden cotton reels for two piles of thread, also our shoe polish box for some shoe polish brushes. The vintage wooden lasts on loan from the cobblers Kingsman Gentleman Cobblers were placed beside the elves hard at work. I pegged open the Ladybird book to the page showing the elves making the shoes and had copies of that picture and the book stuck on display cabinet, so at least the shoemaker and his wife could be seen peeping through the curtains at the busy elves. Ideally I would have painted a larger backdrop on a board featuring the shoemaker and his wife but didn't have the time beforehand to make this and also there were Stony in Bloom trophies at the back of the glass shelf which I didn't want to hide.
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| Nicholas James being an Elf with a hammer while Trendon Elliott is the elf with the needle and thread |
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| The Elves and the Shoemaker display, showing the pointer in the foreground |
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| The Elves and the Shoemaker display including the vintage lasts on loan from Kingsman Gentlemen Cobblers |
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| The Elves and the Shoemaker display |
On the wall beside the display cabinet I put up information about the displays.
The treasure trail was cards of simple clues stuck up around the downstairs walls and windows in the library (the children's section), with instructions to go upstairs to see the display when they had finished the trail downstairs. It was simpler and shorter than last year (which was too wordy for very young readers) and the Library manager was delighted with how it flowed, showing the link between traditional party games and the fairy story (an underlying theme of giving and receiving). Apparently families are enjoying it. Each returned answer sheet results in the participant receiving a shoe or boot template I put together which they can use to design a shoe or boot, I believe the library staff are encouraging them to return these for a display in the library.
I had plenty of fun devising and putting together this display and the treasure trail.
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