The Olive Sparrow

Felting Workshop Recap

Not to sound to repetitive, but due to a non-working hard drive, the one that had all my images, here is finally, finally a recap of the Felting Workshop from Loyalist college in Belleville July 12 - 15, 2012.

I had a wonderful time and the pleasure of a super-nice group of students to work with. Preparing a workshop is a lot of work, as I like to structure my workshops very tightly, through a detailed agenda and planned projects, yet also have the opportunity to adapt the materials to my students needs and skills. This was an intense 4 days with many basic felting techniques covered. 

The main learning outcome I hoped to teach my students was that they would have the confidence to pick up any wet-felting project they would like to attempt after the workshop and have enough basic felting knowledge to try it. 

I brought my extensive library of felting books to the class. The students where encouraged to sign-out the books over night and find inspirational ideas that they would like to work on for day 4.

 

After 3 hours of setting up the class room, I was exhausted, and so excited about the following four days of teaching. When teaching in a space away from my own studio, I often don't know exactly what set-up will await me, and there is quite a bit of improvisation in making it all work. It is exciting, as I love the challenge.

Details of my felted work samples that welcomed my students on day 1. Having taken many different workshops myself, I find it always helpful to have sample to show at the beginning of a workshop with what will be created. Although it can be fun to have a few small projects where the students simply follow the instructions step by step, and only see the outcome at the end. Though that is hard on many students - they need to know what they are making so that they understand the instructions. (not a surprise, considering that creative handwork skills workshops are generally taken by people that are visual). 

 

For each project we worked on in class the students got to choose a specific amount of fibre in the colours they loved. We worked with 16, 18, 21 and 24 micron merino wool, as well as mountain sheep wool which has a micron of about 28.

 

Our intense agenda incorporated my demonstrations of various techniques, followed by work periods for the students. One student used her video camera to tape my demos and reviewed them during the work period when she got stuck on how to proceed next. Much of felting is about sequences of different steps and taking notes is paramount in remembering what to do next.

The finished rose of one student. The roses were made with mainly 18 micron merino, and a bit of 16 micron. 

 

Various student works in different stages of finishing at the end of day 4. The first project had been to make a square of felt and then manipulate the felt into another object. One student made the jacket for her doll (she is an amazing doll maker, that took the workshop in the hope to learn skills to create embelishments for her creations), there was also a beautiful flower and a pouch. One of my quilter students wanted to use here square in a wall piece she was inspired to make from the felt.

Everyone made roses in a special resist dying technique and free-form flowers from prefelt.  

For the major day 4 project, two people made slipers, one a vessel, some made bags. Most projects got finished in class, but some had to be finished later at home. 

 

It makes my teachers heart so happy to see the collection of work created by all my busy-hard-working students.

My lovely students. Thank you all again for giving me a chance to show you what is possible with wool, soap, water and elbow grease. I also appreciated all your feed-back for future classes.

Here are some of the comments from my students in reply to what they enjoyed about the class:

"Learning felting basics and going home with real projects which I have conficence to make again."

"The creativity of Monika"

"It was very educational and would have enjoyed it more if it had been cooler" (note: there was no air conditioning at the school on Saturday and Sunday).

"Great instruction, lots of hands-on learning, great student interaction"

"Everything! The instructor is knowledgeable, talented, teaches well and kind and patient. Exploring felt with no hard rules."

 

If this makes you wish you had been there, I currently have time available to teach some felting workshops this fall. Please drop me a note with your e-mail address and I will send you the details.

A bit of something..

There is a new hard drive on my desk. YEAH!, finally a chance to process some images from this summer. I got up at 4 am yesterday (not as planned) and started to sort and adjust. Instead of waiting for perfection, here are the first few.

How about starting off with pictures of some of our outings, wonderfully inspirational.

 

First week of summer vacation we went to Black Creek Pioneer Village.

We played games of days gone bye, talked to costumed people, ate a picnic lunch and romped around all day.

 

Huxley also started riding lessons which culimated in his riding day camp at the end of August. The barn is in Brighton, a mere 1 1/2 hr drive away from Toronto (yikes), however, it is completelty worth it as not only do his grandparents live in town, Sensei Maryann, his riding teacher is absolutely wonderful. She has an intutitive way with teaching children, and her horses are wonderful and very, very well treated.

Silver Lake Stables

More summer to come.

I have also been busy at work preparing items for the TWS Christmas Craft Fair. 

Details here.

This week I'm making pre-felt and rolling doll heads, as well as preparing holiday-inspired felting workshops (stop back soon for details. Then there are the tomatoes that need to be put by to keep the elderberry jam, the crabapple jelly and the pickles company.

 

 

 

Wet Felting Workshop - Learn from me

There are now only a few spots open for the wet-felting workshop that I will be teaching at Loyalist College In Belleville, Ontario from July 12 - 15. 

Here are the details:

(Click on Image to see it larger)

To register, please sign up here

There is also a description in the Loyalist Summer Program on page 18

The cost of the workshop is only $289 (plus the material cost for all the yummy wool $75). If you need to a place to stay in Belleville, the school offers their residency for a very minimal fee of $40 (plus tax) per night. There are also many lovely B&B's in and around Belleville. 

I would love to see you at the workshop, I have 4 huge boxes of the most amazing wool coming from Europe. Some of those qualities are not otherwise available in Canada. 

Message me if you have any questions about the workshop, and you may contact Heather at Loyalist College for registration information
Heather Cockerline (613) 969-1913 ext. 2467 or Email:  [email protected]  

Show Pictures

The shows I did a couple of weekends ago went well. It was lovely to meet so many new people and exhibit my work. I "hired' our son to be my helper for the day on Sunday. He was amazing! I still remember when I was pregnant that I just thought that our son would come along to the shows, play quietly behind the tent, get used to the life of doing shows and start helping with little things. As I told him the day of the show, he was not that kind of a child when he was younger. Whereas I have seen the children of others be the perfect assistants and quiet companions, my son was always too active (although I did have him along at an art exhibition when he was a mere 6 weeks old and that was a wonderful experience). Now, at eight, he can help me unload the car, set-up the tent, watch the booth for a few minutes, and also, especially at a Waldorf fair, go about doing activities that he likes to do and enjoy him self too. 

Here are a few pictures of my show tent to share with you that come from far and away. 

Welcome to the lair of the Olive Sparrow (give me a shout-out in the comments if you spot the little birdy - he always travels with me). 

Fairy tote bags - sized just perfectly for children to use as their lunch bag, a carry-all to take ballet slippers to class, a toybag to bring just a few precious things along on an outing or for momma to use as a small handbag.

Playsilks - look soon in my etsy store for an update in colours and sizes.

 

Hats and pants for three sizes of dolls. I love seeing all the clothes laid out like this and ready to be combined with tops to every doll-mommas own tastes and desires. 

Dresses, tunics and skirts. I am already excited and inspired for the new clothes ideas in my mind.  

The doll table - with Olive Sparrow Children (11 in all, although one was hiding in this picture) - the plan is that early next week the dolls and I will go on a photo outing - there are a few lovely places I have in mind to take photographs. All in preparation to have them listed within the next 2 weeks. They are all very excited to find their future families. In this picture you can also see wet-felted flowers, hand-dyed dress-up crowns both for children and their dolls, as well as Floppy dolls, nature-table fairies and Mother Earth (from the previous post). 

Shows are a wonderful way to share my work and to inspire moms that make their own dolls for their children. I also enjoy setting up the displays and seeing the expressions in the face of children when they respond to a doll. It's always a tad sad too though, to see how some of the parents really love to get the doll for their child, yet simply can't afford it. That is also why I offer doll-making workshops. I had planned to hold one this coming weekend, but it seems that after the summer vacation will be a better time for it - summer is to be outside and enjoy the weather and time with our families - I love the coming of September and the return back to hand-work and preparing for the holiday markets. 

PS: If you would like to receive advance notice of the dolls becoming available for sale, please send me a message to: [email protected] and I will add you to my early bird list.                   

 

 

Mother Earth and her Fairies

Time has slipped by me again - time that was busy with a trip to Montreal to deliver artwork to my agent, purchase paper for my art and seeing friends. I also dropped by Loyalist College where I will be teaching a 4-day wet-felting class in July to meet the lovely Heather Cockerline who I have been working with. 

Back at home I have been busy felting flowers and creating dolls for the two Mayfair Festivals I will be attending this coming weekend: Westdale Children's School in Hamilton on Saturday May 26th from 11am - 3 pm, and Halton Waldorf School on Sunday May 27th from noon - 4pm.

These fairies, star children and Mother Earth will be available at the shows (if you have your heart set on them, I recommend you come and visit me in Hamilton, or send me an e-mail before the show). They are 6" and 8" tall. 

I am also working on a new group of Olive Sparrow Children that I will keep under wraps until the show. (A girl has to have some secrets.. giggle)... There are a couple of large 52 cm dolls as well as smaller ones available. 

Other Olive Sparrow goods - playsilks, crowns and doll clothes will also be available. 

 

Learning - Putting it all together - India Flint and Marjolein Dallinga

At the beginning of summer I took a felting workshop with Marjolein Dallinga in Picton, Ontario. It was organized by Linda from Rose Haven Farm Store. I like to describe myself as an "experienced felt-book reader and a beginner felter". My history of felting having started in the 90's and then put on hold due to my paintings keeping me exceedingly busy. Switching to working with resin in 2006 did not help me realizing my felting dreams - any floating fiber in the studio is sure to find it's way into the magnetic appeal of the wet resin. 

This year I have been very fortunate to learn techniques from both Marjolein and India. I couldn't help but apply what I learned from Marjolein when working on the landskin with India. Much to my inexperience of the vast amount of space a "crater" takes up, I was not able to make a lovley landskin - I had to felt it "my-way" (that is I used Marjolein's way of gentle felting). I also ended up with a piece of felt that was fully felted before India could stop me (grrr at myself). A landskin for me was supposed to be a larger wrap - mine would have barley able to wrap around me. So I decided to leave it as a cowl. I am very happy about that decision. To fully utilize India's teaching however, I worked on a smaller version of her teachings on my own time during the evenings of the workshop. Resulting again, due to time constraints, not in a landskin, but a shawl. 

Both where dyed together in one bundle, including gifts of mother earth found at the workshop location - and a tiny bit of help from one eucalyptus leaf - the overall brown colour is from black walnuts. No metal was added to this. I attempted to create a gentle variation of natural colours rather than distinct leaf prints - a success when I look at the finished pieces.

(Please forgive me the vast number of photos - being a fiberfile and loving to capture details, here are but a small portion of the total pix taken today).

 

The Shawl

 

 

The Cowl

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Layed-out

 

My Photo Assistant - Morley

I feel blessed to have learned from both women - and I like to think that I am already well underway in making some of it my own. Something I always share with my students - take what I offer and make it your own - apply your own layers to it. 

 

 

Learning - with India Flint

Back in 2008 I found out about India Flint's work and book Eco Colour through a blog (somebody named Olga - but sadly I do not remember the blog itself). I ordered the book right away and received just before the arrival of our barren season (also called late fall, winter, early spring). I had managed to dye a few pieces of fabrics and read the book cover to cover. I immediately was filled with ideas to incorporate her dyeing techniques into my art practice. Sadly, my attempts to bring her to Canada through the Textile Museum of Canada here in Toronto didn't lead to anything. 

Nevertheless, I have been following her growing recognition and fame with glee. Last year I found out too late that she was going to teach a workshop in Toronto and didn't get a spot - luckily though, I had the chance to hear her lecture at the above mentioned Textile Museum and got a chance to meet her in person (we've had the occasional exchange through e-mail over the years).

When I found out that she was coming back to Canada I set all wheels in motion to participate in her workshop. Although I initially ended up on the waitinglist, I eventually secured a spot. 

So without much further ado, here are some pictures of the past week. (Unfortunately, my severe hearing loss, coupled with India's soft spoken words was not a perfect match - if there is something that I'm sharing here that I obviously misunderstood, please peep up in the comments so that I can set things straight). 

The location was a wonderful place to work. After the first day, the coolest of the bunch, I worked outside for the reminder of the week. Thinking that very soon our 6 months of cold weather will be upon us, I tried to soak up as much sun as possible.  

The morning bundles greeting us on day two. Their most simple look speaks to me of a different time. They too loved soaking in those rays of morning sun.

The return of the shadow people (a series of work I did many years ago). Inspired by India's many pocketed smock/tunic, I sewed myself an apron with many pockets from an 3X mens shirt that I had set aside for re-purposing. That apron will definitely become one of my uniforms to wear at the studio and is the outline of the almost pioneer look of my shadow.

Looking at the unrolled bundles. These were dyed in black walnuts we had on the property. Sybil was very kind and let me take home as many as I could collect.

(In this picture - fLtoR - Judy, India, Sarah, Gini, Maggie) 

Stitching on my sample landskin. Using pre-felted old sweater bits with fringes, various types of wool and silk thread/yarn, cheesecloth, prefelt, and bits and bobs.

One of my own bundles - one that got me into trouble (grin) with our revered teacher. I used hand-dyed silk yarn that I was certain had been 100% fixed and would not bleed - ehm.. it did bleed and although most of us loved the blue lines it created, India pointed out that since we have no idea what exactly the acid dyes contain, it made it unsafe now to reach into the dye pot with bare hands to retrieve our packages - a task which previously was perfectly harmless with only goldenrod plants. Lesson learned: stick with undyed materials, especially when working with others.

Garden tour - India led us on a walk through the garden pointing out various plants and their possibilities in our work. This was one of the times I really wished I had the funds to purchase myself a hearing aid that has a wireless transmitter - I could have given India the microphone and would have been able to hear more of what she said. Luckily, my fellow students where extremely kind and let me copy their notes. Indias knowledge is wonderful, extensive and simply amazing!

 

This little fell'er came for a visit and hung around outside. Praying Mantis - and as we learned on our last day there, when the male has mated with the female she bites his head off and eats him - I'm sure that must have some nutrients important in the growing of new babies - but wow, I'm certainly glad we don't have the same mating ritual. 

Beautiful inspiration in the garden. Japanese Lantern. I imagine the lines as stitching; I also think of adding just a little bit of bright colour into an otherwise toned down piece.

Indias wonderful stitching - a sample she created while we stitched away on our landskin samplers.

A detail of Indias work - a finished garment, sewn, stitched and dyed.

Eucalyptus from the florist - samples on silk, wool yarn, prefelt. This bundle was wrapped around that large rock.

Day 5 - our landskins all bundled up and sitting in the cauldron. If my memory serves me right, these where the bundles containing bits of metal.

India getting the kindling in order. She improvised a wonderful fire area so that we could boil the cauldrons all in one go. We also talked about the care she has to take when making fires in Australia, where it is dry and dangerous - this is a task I will have to learn myself. I already told my husband that next year there will be a firebowl in our back yard. 

The match that got the process underway.

Indias wonderful stitched tunic - the back side - I love the threads and the meandering of the stitches (the link shows you the front).

Black walnuts and my humble-bundle warming up.

While the bundles bubbled away India showed us another neat thing (I won't give it away though, because I got the sense that she liked to keep this one as a bit of a surprise for the last day of the workshop). All I'm going to say, is that it's bloody addictive!

Removing the steaming bundle from the cauldron. If we do this at home, we would leave the bundles to cool in the pot, alas, as it was our last day, we didn't have that luxury. There were a lot of wet bundles taken home - I used my felt wetting-out bucket together with some black walnuts. 

My bundle (I think) - I used a lot of silk thread, because this is the colour that I love to sew on my papers with. 

The bundle dyed in goldenrod with an amazing bright green.

We have promised to each other to send around photos of the finished landskins so that we could all see how our big piece turned out. 

I will post pictures of my landskin and my cowl (more about that in my next post) in the days ahead. 

Thank you all my fellow workshop participants for being so kind to me and helping me hear, thank you Jan for organizing the event. Thank you India for sharing of yourself - I'm re-reading the books now, hearing your voice and understanding everything a whole lot more!

 

 

 

The Olive Sparrow Child - Fairy

A lovely fairy has flown away to be with her chosen fairy-mother. She arrived at the birthday of the little girl who turned seven yesterday. As some fairies can sometimes be a bit tardy and easily distracted, she only arrived at dinnertime.

 

A fairy traveling cocoon. Imagine, a fairy can't just travel through the city outside of the cocoon for everyone to see, she needs to have a place she can feel save in and also know that this will make her appearance a bigger surprise for the little girl.

 

Fairies can be shy, out little one was at first very shy when I took her into the garden to take pictures of her. 

 

But she hopped onto the chair I had set out for her and decorated with her favourite flowers -- Windflowers, also known as Wood Anemone.

The mother of the girl shared with me the little girls favourite doll from the book Flower Fairies of the Spring by Cicely Mary Barker - The Windflower Fairy. 

Our fairy turned to face me after I promised to let her read from the book that has her picture inside.

 

 

 Here is her poem, as written by Cicely Mary Barker in 1923

While human-folk slumber,

    The fairies espy

Stars withough number

    Sprinkling the sky.

 

The Winter's long sleeping,

    Like night-time, is done;

But day-stars are leaping

    To welcome the sun.

 

Star-like they sprinkle

    The wildwood with light;

Countless they twinkle--

    The Windflowers white!

 

 

("Windflower" is another name for Wood Anemone.)

I have just completed a felting workshop with the lovely Marjolein Dallinga from Bloomfelt so I wanted to create some wood anemone inspired flowers for the Fairy to take with her to the little girl.

Our fairy was soon curious and not so shy anymore, as she looked around the garden and after a while, she even loved having her picture taken.

Since the little girl would love to take the fairy along with her on outings, it was fitting that there would be a hat for the fairy to wear. Fairy hair is so easily tangled up in sunshine and sometimes the wind tries to carry strands of it away. (Birds also love to have it in their nests, as it protects the eggs and the newly hatched young ones).

  

 

The Fairy loved playing with the flowers and soon forgot that she was ever shy. 

 So we went back to the first spot and she stood there for me to take another picture.

 

I'm very much inspired by the Fairy books and I hope that there are many more that will come to life in the months and years to come. Making a Fairy doll holds special responsibility, as it is an essence that needs to be captured, more than a like-ness.  

___________________________________________________________ 

The dress of the Fairy was sewn from two layers of very fine cotton batiste. A pink one and a blue one. This way it has the almost irridenscent quality of the lilac in the picture of the book. The long wrap around her shoulder is also cotton batiste.

Curly, wavy hair was a special requisite that the little girls mom made to me me. I remember my mother many years ago knitting up some left over wool, washing and drying it and then unraveling it to create textured wool to decorate a dwarf's face with it. I love the springiness this creates in the doll's hair, yet it looks different from the boucle yarn often used for curly hair.

The Fairy is 52 cm / 20" tall 

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.

 

Felting around

Amongst my friends it is a well known, although not much talked about secret, that I am a bookaholic. I've recovered sometimes over the years, then purchased one book and bingo, back on a binge. The good thing is that because of my profession as an artist these are a business expense. Especially, since my books are primarily of the reference type, with lots of pictures and eye-candy. To give you a sampling of the categories, there is a whole shelf of japanese crafting books, a VERY large variety of Waldorf crafting and pedagogical books, and then there is the shelf of felting books.

This large library of felting books was started when I was in art school in the 90's and since then every book published and deemed worthy by me was added. All with the intention that I wanted to study felting. There have been some workshops over the years. For Example, circa '96 with Joan Livingstone at the Harbourfront Centre Craft Studio, followed by explorations in my own studio. I was always fascinated with felting because it gave me very similar effects to paper making (my main study during the art school years), except without the 10,000 dollars of investment into a Hollander beater and a press. It's so wonderfully simple, take sheep wool, comb it, align it, add some soap and warm water and elbow grease, and WOW! there it is.

My art career however had a mind of its own and took of into the direction of mixed media fine art. Once I started working with Resin I have not been able to do any textile work in the studio to keep the space as dust free as possible. Resin acts like a magnet to any dust that floats by.

Yet felt remained on my mind so much that in 2008 I ordered a large amount of felting fibre to be shipped to Switzerland, so that I could pick it up during a visit and bring it back. The cost of the extra suitcase being cheaper than shipping it to Canada. Summers where going to be for felting and since we have a wonderful covered back porch, that was what I would do.. Spend one day a week outside felting. I now have to announce that it is officially 2011, I have yet another order of wool that I brought back from Switzerland last year, and there was only one morning during the summer spent felting with a friend. The wool is downstairs and well.. not getting turned into felt. There are about 10 kg's of wool or over 20 lbs. 

But there is light... During my visit to the old home country last year I had the wonderful pleasure of taking a workshop with Christa Heiz in her wonderful studio. I spent 3 days felting with her and another student, while Huxley attended the public Kindergarten. Working with Christa was so inspiring. I managed to make a lovely bag, a sculptural piece and a play structure for Huxley's Playmobil, as well as a flower and a ring. 

Felted, waiting to have the handle part cut out

Finished bag drying in shape

It was with the inspiration of these smaller items, that I threw all caution into the wind last week and while I was preparing the next collection of abstract pieces that I did some felting at the studio. I am so inspired and think that I might now be able to do more regular work. 

The concept of felting these flowers was taken from one of my felting books in German, however, I spent quite some time planning the laying out of the fibres, i.e. colour sequences. Also the petals are cut by my own design, not based on the instructions. 

This puppy finger puppet was wet-felted and the instructions are based on a few different books. It was going to be a mouse, then turned into a puppy. The basic shape is wet felted, the eyes, nose and mouth is needle felted on. Very delicate work, yet so satisfying.

This boat-shaped vessel was created from a free-form resist. I feel a connection to this form, it is one of my internal symbols. I did not have a specific purpose in mind, and I think this might need to become a series of pieces.

 

Some of my future felted items will end up for sale through the Olive Sparrow. This has been intended all along, since it's business tag line is "Good handmade Goods". Any feedback on these tentative steps toward felted goodies would be much appreciated. 

PS: there has also been a lot of doll-hat knitting going on, textile studio clean-up and set-up and a new camera is now mine.. with the forecast for sunshine later this week, the opening of my Etsy store is coming into close sight.