The Olive Sparrow Child – Baby Dolly

Aa dear client requested if I could possibly make a small baby doll in a sling for her daughter's birthday. Although the deadline was very tight, timing worked out wonderful to create this little as of yet unnamed baby. 

She is about 9.5" or 25 cm tall.

Baby-detail-sling

Cuddling in her sling.

Baby-detail-sling

Wearing teeny-tiny diapers that close with little snaps. 

Baby-detail-sling

The sling fits a 44cm Olive Sparrow doll with the baby snuggly cuddled around mami-doll.

Baby-detail-sling

Fluffy baby hair.

Baby-detail-sling

Wearing her itty-bitty hat.

Baby-detail-sling

Smilling and waiting for her pickup at the studio. 

 

My client and I discussed that they baby should be somewhat unisex in appearance, so that her daughter could pretend to either have a baby-girls or a baby-boy. I think that was successful, as both my husband and my son couldn't right out say which gender the baby is. 

While working on the baby, I also started another small doll. I just picked out the colours for her clothes and hope to work on her later today – now, I'm going to let Huxley create some bean bags on the sewing machine – a first for us and we're both very excited. 

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Each doll is made up of the following materials.

Skin: 100% cotton (Swiss-made to Öko-Tex-Standard 100)
Stuffing 100% “green-processed” wool batt from Canada
Hair: 100% Wool, or a Mohair/Wool Blend
Clothing: 100% natural fibres (linen, cotton, silk)
Shoes: Recycled felted wool sweaters, or pure leather
Face: 100% cotton Embroidery Thread

Workmanship:
Each doll is created individually by artist Monika Aebischer, the proprietor of The Olive Sparrow. She sources and uses only the highest quality materials in her creations – swiss-made skin fabric, Canadian green processed wool stuffing,  wool/mohair for the dolls hair (often hand-dyed by her). Hair for the Olive Sparrow Children is made by crocheting a cap that is sewn to the head, allowing for replacement should it ever become necessary (although most children will object to this, as it changes their doll dramatically). For the wispy hair, a special german mohair is used and a labour-intense technique, for the loose longer hair each strand of wool is individually knotted into the crocheted cap. This is the prime technique for doll-wig creation.

Doll clothing is made from up-cycled vintage and clothing fabrics, in either pure linen, cotton or silk. Up-cycled fabric is wonderful for doll clothes, as the cloth has been washed soft, gentle and free of textile manufacturing products. Monika also felts used woolen sweaters to use for doll shoes and clothing. She knits the doll’s hats out of prime quality knitting wool. Each seam on the doll’s body is sewn twice to allow your child to fiercely love their Olive Sparrow Child. Clothing is sewn with finished seams and some are fully reversible.

 

 

 

Inspiration

"She who dies with the most
Fabric, Yarn, Art Supplies, Tools, etc. wins!"

Have you heard about this competition? I'm doing really well (giggle). Stacks of collected fabrics, baskets of yarns, tools to help me with virtually any task, 10 drawers full of thread in any colour imaginable; are just what I have in my home studio (we won't discuss my painting studio). Having lived a life filled with creation has left its mark. In addition, I have often been gifted with wonderful treasures from friends and neighbours. Then there was the 3 years that I worked at a major fabric store chain as an assistant buyer and could purchase fabric for my personal use at cost prices. I know that even if I live another 60 years and am blessed with working hands, eyes and grey matter, I will not be able to use up everything. I do not need to ever go shopping for supplies again, except for specifics, such as doll skin, doll-hair, eco stuffing wool. 

Yet inspiration can be such a fickle companion. There are moments when placing a hand on a piece of fabric a fully-formed image of a creation springs to mind. Other times it is an image in a children's book, or a conversation with a friend. Sometimes though, what is really needed is to fondle materials that are not yet mine – aka a visit to a yarn or fabric store. Mostly on an errand where I need just a little bit of something specific to compliement something I am working on – inspiration has a habit of jumping on me. 

I ran such an errand this week to Romni Wools, the largest wool store that I have seen. And, there is the basement! A crowded space with stacks and stacks of discontinued and coned yarns/wools. It is a heaven for my doll making needs. What started with the need to pick up a ball of specific hair yarn ended up with quite an inspirational haul of goodies.

Now there has been knitting for the past two days, instead of stuffing body parts – hats in glorious colours. For the 35 cm dolls that will be forthcoming.

Hat-knitting

I got a half cone of the lilac chenille – it is made with viscose and wool – super soft and so pretty. It is a designer yarn from Italy to boot.

When I design my dolls, I sometimes start with the knitted hat and then build an outfit around it. For the chenille hat and the one mohair yarn in the back, I know that some will be for fairy dolls. With wings. The red and green yarns I picked up because I knew they would match some of the fabrics I have in my stash.

I am a very tactile person – I think many of us are, especially our children. When I make an Olive Sparrow Child, I make sure that each one has a wide variety of textures for a child to feel and play with. Teaching our brains to recognize how different each material feels through our fingers connects us more intimately to our world. I would also think it makes us more affectionate and compassionate human beings. We have adapted the song "Four Hugs a day" to "Ten hugs a day". (Lyrics), and include our pets in there too (except the fish, they don't seem to feel the same way.

Talking about tactility – I'd better take my hands off the keyboard now and get creating.

Have a wonderful day!

 

The Olive Sparrow Child – Suzy and Baby-Jo – Available

(Suzy and Baby-Jo are available for adoption – they will be listed in Etsy in the coming days – if you are interested in her, just send me an e-mail and I can give you the details).

Suzy is my newly designed doll. She measures 55cm or about 21" tall – so she is a large doll. She sits very well on her own, and sitting is something Suzy loves to do, because she also has a baby – Baby Josephine, nicknamed Baby-Jo. 

I am headed to the Waldorf Academy to set up my booth, so I will leave you with a few quick pictures of Suzy and Baby-Jo. (There will also be 8 other Olive Sparrow Children available, as well as lovely 6" and 4" bendable nature table dolls). I have also made more clothes since the TWS show 2 weeks ago and now have an extended selection of dresses, tops, pants and hats for 35 , 44-48, and 55cm dolls available.

Suzy-baby-1


Suzy-baby-1

Suzy-baby-1

 

Suzy-baby-1


Suzy-baby-1

 

Road trip reviews and show announcements

This past Saturday I had a booth at the TWS just north of Toronto. Here a couple of pictures of my booth (I was up the night before the show until 2:30 working on my goodies and then back up at 6 to finish setting up the day of the show) – the photos are not the best photographic work I have ever done (grin)…

TWS-2

TWS-1

I will show detailed pictures of the dolls after I have completed the show circut for the season.

 

Saturday evening we took the booth down at 6pm and at 7 we got on the highway to drive towards Ottawa for the Ottawa Waldorf School Winterfair. Ottawa is about 550 km's away from Toronto – a lengthy drive. We created a nest for Huxley in the backseat – a traveling bag propped up with a couple of pillows and a blanket – so that he was able to comfortably and safely sleep while my husband did all the driving. My friend Wendo lives along the highway, about an hour away from Ottawa and we got to crash at her place for one night.

On Sunday morning we rose early and drove to Stittsville to set up for the fair.

Ottawa-1

Ottawa-2

Some of the dolls in the picture are sold, the ones still available will be for sale at the Waldorf Academy in Toronto on December 3rd, along with a few other treasures that I am still working on. Including some nature table beauties.

If you are near Guelph Ontario, this coming Friday I will be at the Trillium Waldorf School at the Cranberry market between 7 – 11pm. I would love to see you. Please note, because there is another vendor there with the large dolls, I was asked to not show them there (instead there will be small bendable nature table fairies and mother earth dolls – never before shown.).

Okay, off to the studio to create to my hearts content. 

The Olive Sparrow Child — Charlene

Charlene is the first of my dolls that I have sold through my etsy store. My client asked for a couple of additional pieces of clothing, which was a lot of fun to create.

Gotta still keep the typing minimal, so here are pictures of Charlene (31cm, 12"):

Charlene-30cm-portrait-2

Charlene wears a green satin fabric tunic (up-cycled from some Isaac Misrahi sheets). I've free-hand machine embroidered a sweet heart onto it, as well as a bit of decoration at the neckline. Her pants are a very finely striped linen (from an up-cycled shirt). Her hat is knitted from a wonderfully soft alpaca wool. 

Charlene-30cm-clothing-detail

Charlene-30cm-portrait-no-hat

Charlene-30cm-sitting-hat

Charlene-30cm-standing-hat

Charlene-31cm-sweater

Charlene-31cm-blouse

Charlene-31cm-dressed-up

She is quite a small doll with a lovely dark mocha skin tone. Her hair is hand-dyed by me and I also created a bit of curliness in it, so she has waves and highlights – a very stylish combination. 

 

Each doll is made up of the following materials.

Skin: 100% cotton (Swiss-made to Öko-Tex-Standard 100)
Stuffing 100% “green-processed” wool batt from Canada
Hair: 100% Wool, or a Mohair/Wool Blend
Clothing: 100% natural fibres (linen, cotton, silk)
Shoes: Recycled felted wool sweaters, or pure leather
Face: 100% cotton Embroidery Thread

Workmanship:
Each doll is created individually by artist Monika Aebischer, the proprietor of The Olive Sparrow. She sources and uses only the highest quality materials in her creations – swiss-made skin fabric, Canadian green processed wool stuffing,  wool/mohair for the dolls hair (often hand-dyed by her). Hair for the Olive Sparrow Children is made by crocheting a cap that is sewn to the head, allowing for replacement should it ever become necessary (although most children will object to this, as it changes their doll dramatically). For the wispy hair, a special german mohair is used and a labour-intense technique, for the loose longer hair each strand of wool is individually knotted into the crocheted cap. This is the prime technique for doll-wig creation.

Doll clothing is made from up-cycled vintage and clothing fabrics, in either pure linen, cotton or silk. Up-cycled fabric is wonderful for doll clothes, as the cloth has been washed soft, gentle and free of textile manufacturing products. Monika also felts used woolen sweaters to use for doll shoes and clothing. She knits the doll’s hats out of prime quality knitting wool. Each seam on the doll’s body is sewn twice to allow your child to fiercely love their Olive Sparrow Child. Clothing is sewn with French seams and some are fully reversible.