Alice's Sewing Basket

The cake is a three layer carrot cake with buttercream icing (odd, I know, but I like it), covered with fondant. I decided to to the actual cake part a sewing basket to go with the little figures on the shirt instead of making the little guys out of cake themselves. Because they are standing on the t-shirt color, I wanted to make the top of the basket colored, but I wanted to give it a little wonderland feel to it, so I went with a pink checkerboard pattern.

I felt the wallpaper-ish print on the shirt was really important to the design, though, so I painted a piece of fondant with the pattern to look like fabric and draped it out of the basket. The basket weave is done with fondant as well, laid over forms to dry. I placed each of those on the cake by cutting small slits in the fondant and securing them in the slits with royal icing.

The figures themselves were done bit by bit over 4 days in between working and going to school, but I wanted them to dry really hard so nothing happened to them in assembly. They were made out of gumpaste and I tried to mix up the colors a bit because the characters on the girls shirt have slightly different colors than the ones on the guys shirt. So the crab is more reddish, where as the hedgehog is more pinkish. I did the crab first, then the hedgehog, then the crane, and the snake lastly after they were placed on the cake. I painted the detail on them lastly, to give them more dimension and to give them the drawn look that the t-shirt has. I do have to say, while they are all cute, the pin-cushion hedgehog is my favorite!

The whole process was very long and tedious, but completely worth the end product. I think it is the best cake I have ever done! But the t-shirt design was amazing to begin with, so it wasn't hard to get inspiration. Because the design came in green for guys and pink for girls, I wanted to incorporate the colors from both designs which is why the top and the ribbon on the basket are pink and the fabric is green.

Hope you guys enjoyed looking, because I enjoyed making it....and eating it!