Sasha display for StonyWords 2026

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.

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.

The heels built up with thick cardboard glued on, and starting to paint

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.

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). 

close up of elf ear worn by Trendon Elliott

close up of elf ear worn by Nicholas James

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. 

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!

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.

Pass the Parcel being eagerly played by 9 Sasha babies

Mabel, Leo and Daisy playing Pass the Parcel

Theo with a book while playing Pass the parcel beside babies Nina and Davy (who had a quick change after the Christmas display)

L-R: Nomalizo, Ebony, Robin, Mabel, Leo and Daisy playing Pass the Parcel

Pin the tail on the donkey

Back view of baby Amy playing with her rattle and books

Laura guiding Edmund as he tries to pin the tail on Eeyore

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. 

The pop-up book open for the pin the tail scene

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.

Nicholas James being an Elf with a hammer while Trendon Elliott is the elf with the needle and thread

The Elves and the Shoemaker display, showing the pointer in the foreground

The Elves and the Shoemaker display including the vintage lasts on loan from Kingsman Gentlemen Cobblers

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.

Sasha exhibition for a local literary festival

Every year the town where we live holds a 2 week literary festival in late January/early February, with a variety of events, mainly talks about books, literary topics or illustrated visits to places around the world plus some musical events with a literary flavour. 

I have participated before, sometimes giving talks (about our street organ and the church organ), mostly attending talks by others, and also playing in our church band in an interactive concert for children (Shake, Rattle and Sing). 

As the Sasha Festival was held locally last year, we created our two Dress a Sasha displays with their much more solid backdrops than we had been able to do for USA Sasha festivals, and we couldn't quite bare to dismantle them after all the work we put into them, so Laura, Miranda, Nicholas James and Timothy have stayed on display in our house ever since in their costumes. This was partly because I had the germ of an idea for the local literary festival. Petrana's theme of English Garden had prompted me to illustrate a favourite story book and my daughter to recreate a pre-Raphaelite painting about an English legend. We also had our 2012 English Sasha Festival Dress a Sasha entries to use, especially as one of them depicts a local nursery rhyme.

At one point I contemplated a talk to explain our displays and the versatility of Sasha Morgenthaler's doll creation for telling stories but a talk was likely to only be attended by adults. What I really wanted was to put on a mini exhibition which would encourage engagement with the themes and stories illustrated by our Sasha dolls and perhaps encourage people to try their hand at creating stories with dolls, props and toys. So I devised what I called a story time and literary treasure trail to complement the exhibition.

I negotiated to use a museum display cabinet already in the local library, it usually displays certificates and trophies won by our local Gardening group who beautify the town. The group very kindly removed all their items from the cabinet for what we thought would be 2 weeks. I think they were happy to do it when I explained two of the displays featured gardens, also they're a lovely group of people.

The day before the festival began, I took a couple of hours off work to set up the exhibition display. First the library manager and I had to adjust the level of the suspended glass shelves in the cabinet, which meant removing both glass shelves (thick heavy toughened glass but we didn't want to drop them!) then adjusting the support rods then placing one shelf back and safely storing the other shelf. This is because I needed height for the displays. I had spent the previous weekend gathering everything needed for the 2012 displays and substituting a couple of items which we no longer owned (a soft toy cow and toy dog for Hey diddle diddle), plus doing some boot swapping because I had reused the 2012 long black boots in 2024 and they were definitely needed with the 2012 outfit.

Setting up the 4 displays was a lot of fun and very satisfying. It was also gratifying to have the positive reactions of the library staff when they came to see how it was going. Then the library manager helped me put up the trail clues around the library walls, her enthusiasm and excitement was infectious. I had an answer sheet for people to use and place into a box for a prize draw once the trail is taken down.

The library manager has promoted the trail and exhibition locally, with the result that one of the local junior schools decided to bring a class of children to use the exhibition to support a creative project they are working on, apparently they brought another class the following week, after the literary festival was over. It turned out parents asked the library to keep the trail and exhibition up for a few weeks longer so they could use it for a half term activity. We checked with the literary festival organisers plus the gardening group and town council who all agreed it could stay up for longer. I had a lovely email from one of the gardening group who did the trail with her 12 year old grandson, they both enjoyed it. The lights in the display cabinet were repaired shortly after we set up the display by one of the gardening group, then PAT tested to ensure they were safe to use.

As two of the displays feature nursery rhymes, the library manager and I brain-stormed ideas of how to use those with the youngest children who visit the library for story time. I happened to mention that we have some old nursery rhymes arranged for our street organ and showed her pictures of the organ. The result was the fun we had at the weekly story time session during the literary festival - we brought the street organ into the library for the children, their parents and grandparents to enjoy singing along to the nursery rhymes we had, plus singing others we don't yet have on the street organ. My husband now has a list of another 9 nursery rhymes to arrange and add to the 6 we already play! This session was also part of the literary festival (though the library does story time every week, the two in the literary festival had special literary themes).

So for your enjoyment, in this post are photos of the Sasha dolls on display, plus some photos of the trail sheets around the inside of the library.

We're already discussing a display and trail for next year, possibly featuring our 2017 and 2022 Sasha festival Dress a Sasha entries.

Hey diddle diddle - updated from the 2012 Dress a Sasha assembled by my then 8 year old daughter

Fair Rosamund - 2024 Dress a Sasha by my daughter 

Fair Rosamund and Hey diddle diddle on the upper shelf

Ride a Cock Horse - my updated 2012 Dress a Sasha display

Ride a Cock Horse

Reuben as the ostler

A Secret Garden - my 2024 Dress a Sasha

Mary, Dickon and Colin in the Secret Garden

The Secret Garden and Ride a Cock Horse in the display cabinet

Library books of nursery rhymes, dolls houses and The Secret Garden

The literary trail sheets were on walls and windows around the library.

Start of the literary trail Sheets 1, 2 and 3

Sheets 4 and 5

Sheets 6 and 7

Sheets 8 and 9

Sheet 10

Sheets 11 and 12

Sheet 13

Sheets 14, 15 and 16 then instructions to go upstairs for the next sheets

Sheet 17

Sheet 18

Sheets 19 and 20

Sheets 21, 22, 23 and 24 on the wall beside the display cabinet

The display cabinet from the side

Today, as half term is over, my daughter and I removed the displays from the cabinet and adjusted the shelves back to their former positions in readiness for the gardening group certificates and trophies.

I took these photos just before we removed the doll displays earlier today after 5 weeks on display in the library.

Fair Rosamund and Hey diddle diddle with the lights on in the cabinet

The Secret Garden and Ride a Cock Horse just before we removed them from the cabinet

The display cabinet open and lit up just before we removed the displays

Me with the doll display just before we removed it today