Sinistral dexterity and all that

I'm a bit out of sequence but what the heck. So I made a Hermione, the latest in a long line of Harry Potter plushies (well, long enough for me. So far : Harry Potter, Albus Dumbledore, Severus Snape).

Hermione demonstrates the two rules of asking me for things:

1. Don't wait yourself till I'm free, you may never notice when I am, I'm always faffing about the place.
2. Never say "whenever you're free" because that may take forever and never happen


As a result I'm afraid I was asked for this some long time back and only now got round to it. And when I say some time back I mean a long while back. Not sure when it was actually.

Anyhoo I didn't put a ton of thought into it and basically riffed off the Harry Potter I made some time back.

I did originally try and make her hair just from cloth as I did with Thor. Unfortunately it mostly came out wonky.

Which I then had to fix

I then made some debate about whether I could find a way to make curly hair or curl some wool to make it curly and gave up, she was going to have straightish brown wool hair bought for the purpose and sewn in place.

I always love cutting the hair to the right length.
 

Final detail was the wand, which, with foolish haste I accidentally sewed to the left hand.

Pretty sure she's not a lefty like me.




The wand was a random colour wrapped in brown wool as I didn't have a brown piece of pipe cleaner. Owner seems happy though.

Making things is magical

I can hear the HP theme already....

So I made a Dumbledore. In the end, that person, who had already ordered a Snape (I finished that a while back), I gave her the Harry Potter I made aaaaaaages ago as the person who ordered that  was an ex colleague, and wasn't paying for the privilege and was never going to visit again to collect him so I figured he was mine to pass on to a loving home. That makes a nice trio to have.

Dumbledore has had 2 incarnations in the movie, who dress very differently depending on the actor playing him.

I gotta say the second guy Michael Gambon may have been fun to watch but his outfit was not all that thrilling and he somehow came off to me as more of a Gandalf type with all the greys.

I did debate making him but with the customer's permission I went ahead with a more Richard Harris influenced creation.

A lovely reds and brocade look.

I didn't quite have brocade but I had some reddish, if not maroon coloured fabric.
The first stage involved the basic body of the plushie and the under fabric for the hair, which I planned to add to with wool. I decided his legs should be grey for want of any other better choice.

 Next stage was adding on some proper hair and I decided to go all out and give him lots and lots. It's a thin white wool if you're interested.

At this point I needed to sew on the bottom of his robes so he had to have his hair tied out of the way. I'm sure NORMAL people would have done this before the hair, but no-one ever called me normal!!

 Next stage was his robes. This is a sort of rich red velvet.

 I added a little bit of detailing by backing some lace ribbon with some yellow ribbon and adding it to the edge.

 I did a similar process to make the edge of the hat.

 I did debate cutting down his hair and then decided I liked it long. Fortunately, so did the customer!

A Harry Potter diversion

So I got a commission from a friend at work. It started with one and quickly crept up to 2 but as far as I'm concerned if you're paying you get to say how many you want.

Her requests were :

1. Severus Snape
2. Albus Dumbledore

This is not my first Harry Potter plushie as I did the boy himself Harry Potter a good while back.

I did warn her early on that Snape was not likely to be super complex or very very obvious. His colour scheme is so simple it's hard to make it distinctive. I did have some fun looking up details as I always do.

I noticed for example, that there is obviously some kind of white undershirt going on under his tunic just faintly obvious at cuff and neck.

His tunic is also a dark navy blue, and has button detailing down the middle and along the arms.

I also noted that his robes don't seem to have separate sleeves


And his legs are black trousers or leggings with black boots.

I was going to make him very pale but I got distracted by being efficient and ended up cutting his face colour from the same pinky colour as Dumbledore which I did at the same time.

Apologies, no making of photos.

At the end I suddenly had a couple of small thoughts of cute accessories. I made him a wand out of a twisty metal covered in black plastic thingy and ...

 A little book saying property of the half blood prince - which is him after all!

The new owner seems happy so yay! On to Dumbledore.

I also now appear to have a waiting list again

After Dumbledore there is :

1. Thor
2. Babydoll (Sucker Punch)
3. Mystery plushie to be revealed at a later date!
4. Hermione Granger

"You owe me"

With the first batch done and the new batch begun, I had said to those who requested that they would "owe me a favour". I was thinking a packet of hula hoops or something, I came in one day after one of my requesters had asked and was greated with a wink and "Ello!".
"Not that kind of favour!" I cried.

From being asked to make one for a kid, I got asked to make one of a kid's character - Harry Potter himself.

I was immediately stuck in a quandry. Did you notice they have slightly different uniforms from episode to episode of the films? Despite the wiki article on Hogwarts uniforms pretending it's some sort of history, the reality is it was obviously just a design thing and I was amazed how it really wasn't obvious. I mean, did you notice? Maybe you're more of a HP fan than me. I decided to go with the early episodes Harry Potter Uniform as it was brighter and more fun for me.

Unlike 10, I was going to embroider the tie as I didn't feel up to making a tiny stripy tie with no yellow and red ribbon to hand. It looked great but I'd forgotten something....
....Plushies don't really have a neck and about half to three quarters of my hard work got hidden by his head.

The scar was fun to do, and with a bit of help I also did the glasses. I tried to go all out with the robes, I even lined them, but the sizing went wrong and they came out a bit shorter than planned but I'm still proud of them.

The sort of curl is just the fabric, which, despite ironing insists on doing that. I still haven't had my hula hoops, and Harry is still waiting for collection on my desk at work.

I was beginning to think again of asking people for money but my heart wasn't in it.