Hobby Horses In Miniature

One thing that went really well at Pennsic War were the little Hobby Horses at $2 each.  I’d get a bunch of ¼ inch wood dowels (or a bit thicker, they were the orange dot ones) at 99 cents each, cut them in half, paint them with two coats of black acrylic, dip the top 1 ½ inches in Elmer’s Glue and then wrap fiberfill around the glued area, holding that on with a rubber band. After drying overnight the wad could not be pulled off the stick.  The rubber band could be left on, usually I had more than enough to not even worry about re-use. You could also use thread or string tied around the end to keep the fiberfill in place too but rubber bands were cheaper and took far less time to put on.

 

Next I’d cut out the horse heads from fancy printed cotton fabric, machine sew them, turn, stuff the muzzle, push the wadded stick up the opening, stuff around it and down the neck of the horse, do a gather stitch around the base and as it was drawn tight I’d insert the ribbon end in and stitch it closed.  The ribbons were at least 6 strands of ¼” wide ribbon cut into 12” lengths and knotted at the top.  I bought those in bulk on rolls.  The horse’s eyes were 8mm black beads, the ears were felt ovals.

The mane on the ones in the picture are done from a fuzzy pillow trim I got on sale and are sewn in by hand, but most of the ones I made had either felt manes (three layers of felt and then sliced with a scissors once they were sewn in) or 5” lengths of feather boa that were attached to the head and back of the neck with a thick line of Elmer’s Glue.  Press the boa down nicely, then let dry. They stayed attached very well.  Of the three, the feather boa manes were the nicest.