My name is Avery, if you please…

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Christmas Eve saw him clothed and waiting for his Mama to pick him up on Christmas day.  The Sprout was tickled pink when she saw him sitting under the little tinsel tree.

I read up on hobbits at Wikipedia when I started making his clothing.  Although the article said that he should prefer them, Avery just didn’t like green and yellow. He’s an uncommon hobbit!  He did say that he would enjoy some bright brass buttons for his waistcoat, but there weren’t any at the store.

He’s got blue tencel pants, a muslin shirt and a wool felt vest.  The Sprout has some other ideas for accessories, but I’ll leave those to her.

(If you want to see more of Avery-in-progress, click his photo to go to page 2 of his album.  There is a link at the bottom for page 1. )

In order to gift the hobbit at Christmastime, he had to have a good bit of work done. I made the mistake of hinting to the giftee that she might be getting a doll, so I had to finish him. He was still hanging around the sewing room totally naked–just as I left him in October.

It wasn’t that I hadn’t thought about finishing him, I just hadn’t been properly inspired.

The trouble was his eyebrows. There was definitely something about those eyebrows that put me off. They didn’t suit any hair idea I could come up with and believe me, I had spent a lot of time debating over the type of hair to put on his head. Nothing seemed right. Not knitted hair, not glued on curls, not wefted hair, not yarn, nothing.

And I couldn’t allow him to be bald for the rest of his life.

Finally I spied some fake fur at JoAnn’s. It looked perfect! It was a mousy brown color–exactly what I had in mind for the little guy. I bought 1/4 yard of the brown (which you can see in the background of the photo) and 1/4 yard of the blonde, just in case I was mistaken about the color.

To make a wig from the fur to custom-fit his little pointy head, I had to first make a pattern. I found a fast food napkin, pinned it in place, trimmed around the edges and folded out the excess. When I cut away the folds, I had a nice pattern to lay on the fur. It never looked as if it would fit, but I knew that my folded napkin wouldn’t lie.

I don’t know if you’ve ever cut fur before, but it is very important to cut it correctly. You can’t just hack away at fur the same way you cut fabric. Well, you can–that’s the way they cut it at JoAnn’s. They made a big mess, too. Fortunately I know how to cut it with the tips of my shears through the backing only. That makes for a nice neat cut and doesn’t ruin the pile.

Once cut, it fit his head neatly and I was able to glue it right on. I used a few stray wispies to fix those eyebrows. A few more fur wisps gave him real hairy hobbit feet. Pretty effective, eh?

Yeah, I could string this out and just show him a step at a time, but I can’t wait! This little guy will be a Christmas gift, so I won’t say too much more about him. The person who’ll get him doesn’t come here as a rule, so he should remain a surprise, I think.

Fortunately for my sanity, this doll had already been sewn and partially stuffed before last weekend’s camping trip. I had all my eyes and paints and such with me, so I was able to work on him after I gave up on the Featherweight last Saturday.

This is the hobbit pattern that Lotus Vele gave to the Cloth Dollmaking Yahoo group. He’s a nice little pattern and I’ve very much enjoyed him so far. The pattern has only four fingers, so I changed the configuration a little and added an “opposable” thumb like my troll has. (There are more photos in the gallery, just click on the profile photo above.)

When I initially sewed him up, I accidentally made two right legs and didn’t have enough fabric left to make another one. I decided to cut off the second right foot and sew on a left foot.

Yes, he has a scar, but few of us don’t, eh?