Olive Sparrow Child — Princess Starlight

The Princess was one of my most favourite custom order I created for Christmas 2010. She went to a little girl in whose house there are already a few Olive Sparrow children, and this little girl had just one wish, a Princess. 

So without further ado, may I present:

Princess Starlight:

Princess-face

Princess-sitting3
In full formal regalia. 

Princess-1-50cm

 

Princess-sitting

Sometimes a Princess has to think a lot about how to help her land and how to make sure that the fairies can have all the space they need in the forest, yet also let the people have enough room to grow food.

Princess-cape-back-50cm

Wonderful cape!

Princess-back-50cm

Without the cape, yet still formal, perfect for ballroom dances in the castle.

Princess-face-2 

For more casual events, yet when it she still needs to wear a crown, the gold part can be removed.

Princess-sitting4-casual
As well as her star skirt, it can also be taken off when she walks through her lands to help her people.

Princess-face-3

  Princess-accessories

Here a quick look at her wardrobe, accessories. The star-skirt can also be worn as a cape. Finding a gorgeous silk-embroidery East Indian outfit worked out perfect for the cape. The crown is made from felt I hand-dyed and sewed as a traditional Waldorf Birthday crown. (Crowns for Children - scroll down a bit to see the child-sized versions of these).

At the last 50% off sale at our local Chez VV (our fancy name for Value Village), I purchased some other gorgeous outfits and am working on a Princes' outfit, and have ideas for fairies and other magical Olive Sparrow children.

Picture of the Princess Starlight concludes my review of sold and custom dolls made in 2010. Today I will focus on getting my Etsy Store – TheOliveSparrow ready for it's grand opening. Stay tuned for the exact date which I will post in a bit (within the next day).

 

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. 

Custom Order – Clothes

The time leading up to Christmas 2010 had me very busy with a selection of custom orders. The next few posts will document these. 

First up, a clothes order for a customer that purchased 3 Dolls from me in 2009 and wished for extra sets of outfits. There where some additional outfits in addition to the once here that I didn't document. 

Please forgive me for the less than stellar quality of the photographs here. I had my camera stolen and had to resort back to my old Canon Powershot, a great camera for outdoor pictures, but just terrible for indoor shots.. please bear with me.. all my creations this year will be photographed with my lovely Nikon D3100 DSLR.

Clothes-all

Hand-knitted hats, a boys outfit, skirts, dresses, blouses, cardigans for 1 boy doll 45cm, 1 girl doll 45cm and one smaller 31 cm girl doll.

Clothes-boys

Detail of boy's outfit, linen shirt, pocketed trousers and felted vest.

Clothes-Dress-grey-front

Very traditional dress for 45 – 52 cm doll with linen facing at the hem and linen belted waist. 

Clothes-Dress-grey-back

Same dress from behind.

Clothes-taupe

Drop-waist dress with linen trim and felted wool cardigan with ruffled edge and crochet neck band. 

A large portion of the fabrics are from up-cycled clothing, others are from my vast stash of cloth. The client came to my house to choose fabrics she liked and I created to clothes around them. 

All seams are sewn with french seams for a beautiful finish and durability. The felted items are sewn with a zig-zag stitch to allow for stretch when the dolls are being dressed by little hands. 

 

The Olive Sparrow Children: Claire

Claire, pretty little Claire is 31 cm tall (12 inches) and was a birthday present for little Maddy a couple of weeks ago. 

Claire-bunny-eseli-linen-front

Here Claire is keeping company with "Eseli" (german for donkey), a little stuffy that is about 40 years old and belonged to me when I was a little girl growing up in Switzerland (and got as a wee little toddler from St. Nikolaus… grin). There is also "Love-Bunny", Huxley's Christmas gift from Bear Noel (a very sweet Holiday Story). The bunny was purchased from Imaginechildhood.com and arrived on the 24th of December, just in time to be wrapped up and placed under the tree. Bear Noel doesn't deliver overnight like Santa, but I had to wrap him up. So many times in the past months I caught myself thinking "Oh, what is that real bunny doing here". I was a bit worried that Huxley at five and a half would be too old to take to the him, but no such fears, he is a favourite and is unbelievably lifelike. 

Claire-bunny-eseli

Here Claire is wearing a pinafore made from fabric that Maddy's mom provided me as memory fabric (generally fabric that the child receiving the doll at one time wore themselves, or that holds other memories that the parents wish to share with the little one). 

Claire-pink-pinny-backview
The memory fabric wasn't quite large enough for the whole piny, so I put some of the green linen from the pants onto the back of it. There is also another memory fabric used as binding on the sleeves of the linen tunic.  


Claire-bunny
Could there be anything more fun than ridding a bunny?

Claire-linnen-pinny

Huxley used to go to school with Maddy and I am friends with her mom, so as a little extra, I crochet the booties and the acorn necklace for Claire. On the front of the linen side of the piny I used another memory fabric piece and sewed a large pocket.

Claire-linen-tunic
On the linen tunic I appliqued three hearts from yet another memory fabric. The easy way working with memory fabric is to have large pieces and make the whole outfit from it, this was more challenging, yet I also really enjoyed finding an appropriate way of incorporating these little itty bitty memories. 

Claire-back-head

This is a view of the mohair wig from the back. I love the colour and the fuzziness of it. 

Claire-portrait
Claire's face, sweetly embroidered wit cotton floss. I tend to make the mouth in more than one stitch, as this provides a better security to the stitches. I am worried that just one large stitch could easily get caught on something and putt, hence distorting the face. The star-type eyes I have always loved, as the various angles of the thread tend to catch the light and add a glossy look to the eye. I double the fabric for the head for extra play-strength. 

Claire really made her way into my heart and she was very hard to let go. I have another few babies on the go, but the past couple of weeks had me locked into my other studio (the artwork), as I had to finish eight works to be sent to the Whistler Village Art Gallery in time for the Olympics. Then my old, trusted, much beloved Bernina needed some tender care and had to spend a couple of weeks in the shop. Today I'm getting to pick her up again, so the fun can start anew. 

An etsy shop is also in the works of being set-up. If you are interested in my dolls and would like to receive an advance notice of Olive Sparrow Children ready for adoptions, send me an e-mail at: info at theolivesparow dot com (replacing the at with an @ and the dot with a .) With "Olive Sparrow Children Pre-view" in the subject line. When Olive Sparrow Children are ready, you will receive a private notice with a profile of the doll before she goes up for general sale at Etsy.

Currently I am accepting 1 custom doll per month, as I have so many little Sparrow Children in my head waiting to be created and "delivered". I started to make these sweet creatures as an alternative creative outlet to my dolls, letting me use my textile skills and visions and brining to fruition a dream that I have had in my heart for about twenty years (more about this in a later post).

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
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, north-eastern-Ontario green processed wool stuffing, her own hand-dyed wool/mohair for the dolls hair.

She uses 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. 

All Olive Sparrow Children’s hair is made from a crochet 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). The hair of each doll is made from wool or mohair yarns.   

Olive Sparrow Child Profile: Kalle

Kalle is Silas's (scroll down to see him) cousin. He now lives together with Lina and Mia and a wonderful family that has four children. Kalle is 45 cm tall and a very sweet and attentive brother.  

Kalle-1

He is also very stylish and loves to stay warm with a felted cashmere scarf and shoes.

Kalle-2

His linen shirt is sewn with french seams and has two snaps to hold it closed (easy on little hands). His vest is an up-cycled wool sweater and looks very hip. His pants are made from a beautiful cotton-linen mix.


Kalle-pia-1
   As you can see, he is Lina and Mia's older brother. 

Pia-mia-kalle
Here are the three of them. To see detail pictures of Lina and Mia scroll down on that page. 

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
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, north-eastern-Ontario green processed wool stuffing, her own hand-dyed wool/mohair for the dolls hair.

She uses 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. 

All Olive Sparrow Children’s hair is made from a crochet 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). The hair of each doll is made from wool or mohair yarns.