As soon as I knew the themes for the Dress a Sasha competition at the 2024 Sasha Doll Festival, I knew exactly what I wanted to recreate. Ever since I was nine, I have loved the story of Mary, Dickon and Colin in The Secret Garden. It was so far removed from my childhood experiences growing up in the sunny southern hemisphere, and opened up a new world to me of India and northern England.
The card on my Dress a Sasha entry says:
The Secret Garden is a children’s novel by Frances Hodgeson Burnett (1911) is which was dramatised in 1975 by the BBC. My grandparents sent me the book in 1978 and I was captivated by the story of Mary, Dickon and Colin who found healing, growing magic in the Secret Garden.
I eventually watched the TV series as an adult and have recreated the outfits worn by the three young actors in that series. The robin which showed Mary the key to the Secret Garden, Dickon’s wild fox and roses beloved by Colin’s late mother all feature in this English garden scene.
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| 1975 BBC production DVD, back cover of my copy of The Secret Garden book, plus the information card about my 'Dress a Sasha' entry |
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| 1975 BBC production DVD, front cover of my copy of The Secret Garden book. |
I knew this meant making outfits for three dolls (the maximum allowed in the Dress a Sasha rules) and it also meant sourcing fabric to suit the period.
For Mary's shirt I found a striped shirt I had worn years ago for work and reused the fabric. I had some brown fabric the perfect colour and weight for her dress, and made her a petticoat trimmed with cotton lace. I had a Sasha hat which I trimmed with a large apricot/peach satin ribbon (left over from my wedding). Her long boots were the same Ruth Hartley boots I had used for my 2012 'Ride a Cock Horse to Banbury Cross' Dress a Sasha entry (actually in the BBC series, I could see Mary was wearing ankle boots, but the long boots serve very well).
For Dickon's shirt I had some suitable beige cotton fabric. I used a slightly different brown from Mary's dress for Dickon's waistcoat (ideally I'd have liked to have made his waistcoat in brown leather, but didn't have anything suitable, not even from my husband's pipe organ leather collection) and the vintage button gave it a close enough appearance to being leather. I had to purchase some Yorkshire tweed fabric for his knickerbockers as I didn't have anything suitable, they are made with elastic threaded through the bottoms, so they cling to his legs (also useful for the doll stand pole). I commissioned a pair of black lace up ankle boots from Ruth Hartley for Dickon, as I couldn't find the boots I knew I had (of course, they came to light after the new boots arrived!).
Colin's outfit, which looks in the BBC production like black velvet, was made from some black cotton fabric which has a faint geometric pattern and despite it not being velvet (which would have been tricky to sew at that scale if I had any) gives a sense of him being a privileged pampered boy. I trimmed his jacket cuffs and neck with the same hand made cotton lace I had used for Mary's petticoat. I already had the long white socks and some original Gregor black slip on shoes for him.
I used my blond green dress Sasha doll Miranda for Mary. Both Nicholas James (Colin) and Timothy (Dickon) had the right colour hair for their characters but it was not long enough to suit the styles of the late nineteenth century. So I used an auburn Bebe wig I already had for Dickon and purchased a Bebe wig in brown for Colin, then fitted these over their hair. I would have liked to have curled Dickon's wig a bit, so just made it tousled, which worked fine.
The next challenge was the garden. I had the backdrop boards all screwed together and cut out some thick card for the back and side walls and the base. I painted the back and side walls to give an approximation of the walls depicted in the TV version of the secret garden. I used the same piece of green felt and the two doll stands trimmed with green felt used for my 2012 Dress a Sasha entry for the base. I needed Italianate pots for the garden, so went to our local Oxfam and found some little pots which I repainted to look like grey stone, with a marbled effect (something I learned to do when set painting for my secondary school production of Annie, back in 1986, when we had painted a marble staircase and the Venus de Milo for Daddy Warbucks!). I actually painted over Wedgewood for the pot in front of Mary! Then, in the spirit of reuse, I raided my garden and used pyracantha twigs for the structure of the climbing and bush roses, tying them together with dark green raffia. I attached miniature paper roses to these twigs using the wire stems of the paper roses (purchased from Papertree, made from recycled paper), and used green tissue paper to give an impression of leaves. A bag of grit from Odells, our local ironmonger/everything shop, provided the ballast needed in the pots to hold the roses upright.
I wanted Dickon to have his fox and Mary to have the robin who showed her the key to the Secret Garden, so I bought a needle felted fox which was made as a Christmas tree decoration and a little needle felted robin (which came without legs) from another seller. I gave the robin legs by bending to shape a black hook from a hook and eye set in my sewing box, then stitched it onto the robin's belly.
I made the spade from a bamboo chopstick, thick card and a cable tie glued and bound to the handle with the green raffia, then painted it. The robin hooks onto the spade handle (part of the painted chopstick) with his hook legs, I was really pleased with how this turned out as the spade and robin legs were last minute creations, only a couple of days before the festival.
Colin's trowel is made from a piece of chopstick and thick card, bent to shape, glued and painted.
The tulips he is tending came from our trip to Amsterdam and Delft in 2018, though I popped their pot into a miniature terracotta pot, and put a rose in a bigger terracotta pot alongside him.
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| My Secret Garden 'Dress a Sasha' display with books and DVD ready for the Sasha Doll Festival |
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| Side view of Mary's hat, showing the satin ribbon I added |
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| Dickon and Colin |
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| Colin with his trowel and tulips |
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| Colin with his late mother's roses and tulips |
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| Closeup of the trowel I made |
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| Top view of the climbing roses and wall, with Mary and Dickon |
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| Close up of the robin perched on the spade handle |
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| The robin perched on the spade beside Mary |
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| Mary and Dickon, robin, roses and fox |
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| The fox, Dickon and Colin |
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| Roses and tulips in their pots |
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| Roses and the fox |
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My Secret Garden 'Dress a Sasha' display ready for the Sasha Doll Festival
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I had so much fun creating this display, it was enormously rewarding to recreate something I loved from my childhood.
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