Hobby Eagle

As soon as my nephew Nathan learned how to walk I decided that he was ready to fly. So for his first birthday I made him a hobby eagle. (It's like a hobby horse, but much more cumbersome.) Being the giant Tolkien nerd that I am, I called it Gwaihir the Windlord.

In making the pattern, I tried to size it appropriately for a taller-than-average one-year-old boy. Time has proven that I, in fact, sized it appropriately for a taller-than-average three-year-old boy, which is just as well, since time has also proven that Nathan had virtually no interest in the eagle until he turned three.

For the structure I used a wooden spindle with a dowel stuck through it at a right angle for the handle. I had already decided to go with a muted palette of natural eagle-toned browns (because everyone knows that one-year-olds love subdued, tasteful colors), so I simply used a basic oak stain. I put a caster on the bottom as well because I figured that would make it easier to use for a boy too small to actually pick the whole thing up.

I then made a complete mockup of the entire fabric section out of paper. I of course made it unnecessarily complicated with layers of feathers in gradated colors and lots of alternating curves and a big gaping maw with a twisted tongue. So when it came time to sew the real thing out of fabric, I had to do a lot of hand sewing on the little fiddly bits. Then I used foam rubber to stuff the wing feathers and batting to stuff the rest of it and glued the fabric pieces onto the wooden structure.

Since I was making this in Wisconsin and my nephew lives in California, I then had to make a giant, custom-made foam core box to ship the huge thing to Nathan. I think that he found the box at least as interesting as he found the eagle.