#cécile rey

[blackinperiodfilms]

American Girl is offering FREE downloads of books featuring their Black characters!!

This includes books and short stories featuring historical characters like Addy Walker, Cécile Rey, Melody Ellison and modern characters like Gabriela McBride, Makena, Evette, and Maritza.

Check it out!

[desertdollranch]

It's October of 1853, and Cécile and her family are getting ready for a citywide celebration. Yellow fever tore through New Orleans through the summer, and thousands of people died. The survivors are coming together to remember the lives lost, and to celebrate the end of the epidemic. Everyone in the Rey family is contributing in some way.

Cécile wants to recite a poem that she's trying to write, but she's having trouble finding her voice and her talents. So she talks to Mathilde, who cooks for the Rey family. While they work together making fruit cakes, Mathilde explains that your natural gifts and talents often reveal themselves in unexpected ways.

This purple dress makes a brief appearance in Cécile's Gift, the last book in Cécile's series. It's fully revealed in her paper dolls, where it's called "Cécile's shawl collar dress". I've been wanting to make it for my Cécile for such a long time, but it was only recently that I found the perfect fabric! It's not an exact match, but it's pretty close, and it is so beautiful. It's a reproduction of an actual print produced in the late 19th century.

I did try to dye a small swatch of the fabric with some blue fabric dye; it didn't come out looking like what I'd hoped for, so I left it as is and proceeded. I used Kindred Thread's French Quarter Dress pattern, with modifications. I used two rectangles for the shawl collar, and gathered them at both ends.

I'm still working on the brown apron shown in the book illustration, so in the meantime Cécile gets to help in the kitchen without it, and try not to stain her new dress. Here she is with a plate of homemade beignets! These classic New Orleans treats, similar to donuts, that are served at the famous Café du Monde, located in the French Quarter. If you want to make them at home, you can do what I did and buy a box mix at Cost Plus World Market. Cut them into dainty little squares, throw them in hot oil, and they become pillowy little pastries. Then you sprinkle them, or completely coat them, with powdered sugar.

They're traditionally served with coffee flavored with chicory, which you can also buy!

[americangirlpolls]

[stingrayextraordinaire]

American Girl Moodboards // Cécile Rey

My soul is from elsewhere -- I’m sure of that -- and I intend to end up there.

(requested by anonymous)

[akinas-shave-ice]

Happy Mardi Gras from Cécile and Marie-Grace!

I dressed them up and took them to a Mardi Gras celebration with me. Here they are by some stained glass.

[pleasantsamantha]

Cécile and MG matchy matching! I got Cécile’s outfit from a doll sale last year handmade by a seamstress.

[mapleleagirls]

An (admittedly kind of bad) attempt at making a big image with every historical. I started with the one AG made and added the retired girls. I really wanted to add the best friends but I have no idea how I would do that.

[midsummerdolls]

Happy DOC month! I wanted to make a post highlighting all of my dolls of color, but didn’t have enough time to do an entire group shot for them. So here’s a compilation! My black dolls (1st photo), my AAPI dolls (2nd and 3rd photo), and my native/indigenous dolls (last 4 photos). It is so, so important to me to represent the diversity of the human population, and I hope my DOC collection continues to grow in the years to come.

[dolls-and-cats]

Here's my last post exploring the world of some of the real people from the time and place that Cécile and Marie-Grace's stories are meant to represent.

1st couple of pics - Marie-Grace and Cécile enjoying beignets at Café du Monde, which has been there since 1862. Someone else recently posted about them at Café du Monde as young women and I forgot who said it - please feel free to identify yourself!

Pistachio-colored house - built by Jamaican immigrant and free person of color Louis Nelson Fouché in the early 19th century https://nolatours.com/free-people-of-color-architecture-2/

Yellow house - built by Jean-Louis Dolliole, the same person whose home I showed yesterday, in 1819 https://www.frenchquarter.com/freepeople/

I love the way that the fictional stories drew me into learning more about the real history in this area.

[manymanydolls]

Went to a doll show yesterday and got this Hallmark prize necklace from 2003. It’s too small for me, but Cécile is rocking it!

[effulgentpoet]

endless list of favorites:

CÉCILE REY & MARIE-GRACE GARDNER: AN AMERICAN GIRL SERIES (Denise Lewis Patrick & Sarah Masters Buckey)

“I think…” Cécile paused, choosing her words carefully. “I think it means that what people give us- not money or fancy clothes or such things… but things like kindness and love- we should always give to someone else?” She paused, uncertain, and then she brightened. “I mean that we should pass on those gifts to others.”

[desertdollranch]

Cécile doesn’t go to school like some other girls, including her best friend, Marie-Grace. Instead, her tutor Monsieur Lejeune comes to the Rey home and teaches her there. Today, she is receiving instruction in literature, including the sonnets of William Shakespeare, and Monsieur Lejeune challenges Cécile to write her own poem, in the style of Shakespeare!

[americangirlpolls]

[oddballism]

I just bought a Cécile off Mercari!

(Is it rude to say how much a doll you bought second hand was?)

Her dress has a big stain on it and is practically ruined and she has no other clothes or accessories, but her curls are intact and she’s mine!!!

[akinas-shave-ice]

Cécile is reciting poetry for Marie-Grace from Les Cenelles, the first poetry anthology by Americans of color! I made her the mini book and actually printed poems from the original on the pages in French!

[addywalkerstan]

paging history nerds here: can anyone say whether cécile would have played with black dolls or white ones? as far as i know there were not any manufactured black china dolls, so any more expensive dolls would have been white, and she’s of course wealthy