Introducing Gabriel Oak

Gabriel Oak is a character from Thomas Hardy’s 1874 novel, ‘Far from the Madding Crowd’. In Hardy’s story, Gabriel plays the part of a handsome young shepherd who suffers unrequited love for a beautiful but haughty and rather shallow woman, Bathsheba Everdene. Bathsheba prefers the dashing Captain Troy. She marries Troy, but after many trials and tribulations, Troy is killed by another of Bathsheba's suitors and she is free to marry her true love, Gabriel, in one of the very few happy endings that Hardy allows.

My Gabriel Oak is a mini-scarecrow dressed in the baby clothes that I found the other day in friend Rozi’s stash (see my previous entry on Freaky Faces). Here’s how I made him.

I selected a pair of strong utility trousers, a jolly check shirt, a pair of trainers, a hat and some sleep mittens from Rozi’s treasure trove. Rozi brilliantly suggested that I also take home an all-in-one sleepsuit to hold all the scarecrow’s stuffing firmly in place. This worked a treat!

For Gabriel’s head, I enlarged a cloth doll’s head pattern by 350%. The head has a neck gusset as well as a back and a face, which makes it really three-dimensional. I cut out the pattern pieces from flesh-coloured fabric, paying careful attention to the grain of the fabric so that the head would not distort when it was stuffed. I machine-sewed the pieces together, leaving a gap at the top of the head through which to insert the stuffing. This hole will be hidden under Gabriel’s hat.

Before stuffing the head with doll stuffing, I inserted one ball of a dumb-bell shaped wooden armature into the middle of Gabriel’s head, so that the bar of the bell and the other ball protruded down from his neck. This device would serve to attach his head securely to his body.

I stuffed Gabriel’s head firmly with polyester doll stuffing and drew his features onto his face with crayons. To complete his head, I stitched blond doll hair all around the brim of the hat, and clamped it tightly onto Gabriel’s head. The doll’s head pattern worked surprisingly well, especially considering how much I had needed to enlarge it.

I began to stuff the body by filling the feet of the sleepsuit with doll stuffing, before putting Gabriel’s shoes on. They stayed on without my needing to do anything more to secure them. Then I stuffed the legs of the suit with doll stuffing.

I used a length of my favourite foam pipe insulation to make Gabriel’s arms, cutting them at the ‘elbows’ and inserting a wooden ball at each elbow to form a flexible joint. I stuffed the mittens and sewed them onto both ends of the pipe to suggest hands. I pushed the length of articulated pipe down inside the arms of the sleepsuit so that the mittens popped out of the cuffs. I sewed the cuffs of the suit to the mittens to keep everything in place and filled out the upper arms with extra doll stuffing.

To attach the head firmly to the body, I wrapped the bar of the dumb-bell that was sticking out of Gabriel’s neck firmly to the centre of his pipe insulation arms with duct tape. I wrapped some quilt wadding around the other ball, and tucked it inside the body of the sleepsuit so that it lay flat in the middle of Gabriel’s chest.  

I stuffed out the torso of the Gabriel’s sleepsuit with more doll stuffing and buttoned up the poppers down his front to hold all the stuffing together inside his body. To ensure a snug fit at the neck and prevent the stuffing from coming out, I ran a drawstring around the neck of the sleepsuit and pulled it tightly against the wooden armature.

Finally, it was time to ‘dress’ Gabriel in his clothes; first the shirt and then the trousers. Like the shoes, Gabriel’s clothes do not need to be sewn in place as they fit snugly to his figure. I added a red cloth kerchief round his neck. As Gabriel is a shepherd, I tucked a black knitted sheep that I had made earlier under one arm and I gave him a bunch of carrots, run up from odds and ends of material, to hold in his other hand.

Gabriel is a solid, weighty, soft-bodied scarecrow. He is poseable, and he can either sit down or stand if propped against a solid support. If I need him to stand independently, I can support him from a wooden dowel attached to the centre back belt loop of his trousers.