Video: A Kirsten Inspired Christmas | American Girl Recipes and Crafts
It’s Friday, Dear Reader! That means it is time for a new video on our YouTube channel. This week’s episode is one that truly brings me excitement and joy to share with you as it is a fun and personal project that I have been dreaming about for a long time and planning for the last three months. We have been working hard to bring this idea to life in a new series, which I hope that we will continue to share over the course of 2024.
This new series is focusing on the line of Pleasant Company American Girl Dolls, specifically their historical characters. In this series, my hope is to recreate some of the scenery from these stories and share the history of each character, of course, with my own twist. I will be going through the American Girl historical character cookbooks and craft books, sharing my dolls and their accessories with you, and hopefully inspiring some of you to go back in time to when you first enjoyed your own doll.
about kirsten:
If you could not already tell, I am showcasing Kirsten’s story first. The American Girl doll Kirsten Larson is a young Swedish immigrant, whom I believe begins the story at the age of 10, and travels by ship to America in 1854. She and her family travel from New York City to Minnesota by train and ferry and eventually by foot as they learn that they cannot afford to purchase a wagon to finish the journey. While they have to make the difficult decision to leave behind the majority of their belongings, they do not spend too long walking to their relative’s farm.
What I love about this story is that it does highlight the hardships that many Scandinavian immigrants had to face in a way that makes it easier for elementary age children to understand. There are several very difficult trials that Kirsten must face, including her good friend Marta dying of cholera while on the ferry to their new home state. This story truly hits close to home for me as my own family is of Swedish and Danish descent, and I find that while I did not take much of that in as a child when I read the books, now as an adult they feel even more significant in helping me to understand my own family’s story.
recreating kirtsen’s world:
For this series, it took me a long time to decide on how far I wanted to take the entire project. Did I want to invest in creating the doll’s outfits? Did I have the time to make it happen? Would it be easier to just cook some of the food and be done with it? Of course, it would easier! But would it have the same impact for our audience?
In the end, we decided to just go for it and sew our first historical costume. Well, Jill sewed it! I gave moral and financial support. Historical costuming is something that I absolutely love to watch and consume. However, it is not in my interest to become a historical costuming content creator. Rather, I just really really love learning and watching my talented friends on social media make their historical costumes or clothing that they wear every single day. But it has come up within the last year whether or not we should venture into showcasing more historically accurate costumes here on the blog and our social channels.
For now, I think that this little series is a fun way to dip our toes into (somewhat) historical accuracy. But I do think that I will be sticking with my historically inspired clothing for now because it is more accessible to you, our lovely reader, who may want to partake in a fantasized version of this aesthetic.
making the costume:
The costume itself was made in 3 days after all of the planning went into its construction. It took us months of deciding whether or not to even make the costume, then searching for fabric in local shops rather than purchasing it online, and researching and ordering the pattern.
The pattern that we used is the 202 Day Dress with Yoke by Fig Leaf Patterns. This pattern is dated for 1856-1862, and we thought that it was our best bet for an 1854 dress for a pioneer woman, at least as far as we could find online.
The 1850s is kind of a difficult time period to work with in terms of costuming because there aren’t a lot of patterns specifically for this decade. There are many patterns for the 1830s and 1860s! But the 1850s is somewhere in between the large puffy sleeves and short skirts of the 1830s and the bell sleeves and gigantic skirts of the 1860s. I did decide to research which undergarments women who were traveling across the western United States at this time period. From what I could find, women of this time were still wearing corsets beneath their dresses, which were more simplified than say a woman who was living in a well secured home with help. These were (generally) religious women who still had standards of dress, you know! However, the women of the prairie did opt for less paneling in their skirts. Rather than 8 panels, they might have 5 or 6 which would result in a much less full skirt and less weight to carry around. They also might opt out of wearing the crinoline that was popular during this decade, or wear a crinollette, which was kind of like a half-crinoline.
The fabric for the dress is Marcus Fabrics The American Textile History Museum by Judie Rothermel Design 3277. We found this at a local shop in their collection of civil war reproduction fabrics. We used a basic off-white cotton for the sleeve cuffs and opted to remove the white collar, which Kirsten’s Meet Outfit has. We found red and white striped fabric for the apron and created Kirsten’s Spoon Bag from her Meet Accesories, and I realized at that moment that we have the same initials.
I was generously gifted the 1860s Gored Corset from Red Threaded, and I am so thankful because we were too intimidated to try making a corset so quickly for this costume! This corset is the correct shape for the time period, which I think makes the dress really look appropriate. Red Threaded also sells corset patterns if you would like to try making your own.
quick links:
Marcus Fabrics The American Textile History Museum by Judie Rothermel Design 3277
Red Threaded 1860s Gored Corset (Use Code KIRSTEN10 for 10% off until December 31st)
kirsten’s cookbook and craft book:
To create the recipes and crafts for this episode, I turned to none other than Kirsten’s Cook Book and Kirsten’s Craft Book. I actually did not own these originally, which I was shocked to find out that they even existed! I had to scour the internet for them and found a collection of the books on Ebay. I ended up buying Kirsten, Samantha, Molly, and Felicity’s books. It was one of the most exciting packages I have opened all year!
The books themselves are fairly straightforward and simple so that they can be used by children aged 8 to 12-years-old. They also have fun little historical tidbits inside that really bring the doll’s story and world to life!
I thought for this episode it would be fun to recreate the recipes for Potato Soup and St. Lucia Buns. While I did take a lot of inspiration from the book itself, the recipes have been slightly altered to fit my personal tastes and needs.
As for the crafts, we decided to make some hand dipped beeswax candles and Kirsten’s stenciled box. The box made an excellent example for a Pioneer Christmas Gift Box!
quick links:
final thoughts:
This ended up being an incredibly fun and rewarding project. Talk about making your inner child happy! I loved putting this all together and working with my mom to help make it happen. It was also such a pleasure to take my dolls out of their storage bins and lovingly look through all of the little pieces again. My oldest son is not interested in playing with them, but I have a feeling my two younger children will be big fans of the dolls and their accessories when they are a bit older! I have been saving them for quite some time now…
If you liked this video, it would be such a help to me if you subscribed to our YouTube Channel or left a comment either on the video or here on the blog! I would love to hear your thoughts so that it can help me to create future videos. Which Kirsten recipe should we try next? Which American Girl doll is your favorite? I would love to hear all about your dolls! I have thirteen American Girl dolls, and I can’t wait to recreate my other historical doll’s worlds in the new year.
xoxo Kayla
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