Gilly's wool saddle pad

 I made Gilly a wool saddle pad with wool I used to hook rugs. Since I am not hooking now I thought I would put it to good use. Wool is a natural fiber and so good at wicking water away and cooling, I thought why not?

I used three layers of wool on each side of the pad and the yellow line is where I put a another layer of wool for more support where the saddle will sit. This design was used from my ThinLine pad. Pad feels all soft and cushy and I used it on Gilly for the first time this afternoon. (same pad color looks darker in house)

I almost forgot to take the picture of the pad on Gilly after my ride. I had removed the girth and was about to remove the saddle when I remember, take a picture!
I have ordered a sheepskin rug so I can make Gilly a fleece girth cover, I didn't like the ones I found on line so I thought I would make one myself....yea, I'm like that.
I haven't been able to ride for about a week, going to chiropractor but am on the mend so I rode today, between rain showers. Gilly was good, we had fun. Tomorrow is supposed to be nice, no rain! So I want to get another ride in and then hit the sewing room and get busy on some more saddle pads.

Halloween

This is from a card I made a few years ago so I thought I would post it again. 

Have a spooky good Halloween!!!!

The Fabric

Here is the fabric I bought yesterday at The Quilted Work  click on the link to see the beautiful shop and the gardens full of gorgeous day lilies....lots to see, check it out. The shop is only 10 miles from home and it's close to the stable where I take Gilly sometimes to ride in the indoor arena. I am also going to work there one or two days a week, fun!

Oh, boy! The fabric above is one of my favorites for sure! This will be good for western or English, pretty! Some of the fabrics I bought as yardage for a full pad and some 1/2 yard cuts for corner trims and such, it will speak to me with time to start sewing it.

 This beautiful indigo blue with snowflakes is pretty neat too, it's also a favorite.

 Not sure what I will do with this one but it caught my eye so......I had to buy it.

Two of these have strips that can be cut and used as decorative pieces, the black with the copper and silver outlined leaves is interesting and the copper metallic is another neat one.

Love the turquoise and black one is interesting, that one looks western wear type to me but I don't know yet.

Ahh, horses running in the snow this one may end up as a band on the front of a hoodie sweatshirt. Yes, I know we will be having that snowy look all too soon! Ugh!

WOW!!! Flames, I see this one on a black background and I have an idea that in-tales some decorative glitzy metallic thread, yes, I do machine embroidery too. So many ideas my head is going to burst! Maybe if I make a pad like this for Gil it will light a fire under him to move faster, think? I don't! LOL
I started another pad this evening, will finish it tomorrow and start another one.

I have lots and lots of fabric from when I quilted years ago but one can never have too much fabric! ;-)
Jane

Gilly Wear

Me and Gilly are starting a new adventure, well, he is just the model I am doing all the work and he has his name on it! "Gilly Wear" Gilly's line of designer one of a kind saddle pads. This all started over taking off the rubber ThinLine pad off a saddle pad I had so I could dry it. You can wash the pad but not dry it in the dry because of the rubber pad sewn onto it....... sooo....I took it off! Being a seamstress I thought I can fix this; made a pocket for the rubber pad to fit in and I could remove it to wash and dry the pad.

After I removed the rubber pad, you can see the outline of it still on the cotton pad.

Pocket added and rubber pad is inside, I left an opening in the top center of the pocket so I can remove the rubber pad for washing and drying. I used the green fabric just cause it was handy, should have used black but it wasn't on hand.

Here is a picture of the black rubber pad laying on top of the dressage pad so you can see what it looks like and how it fits inside the pocket. After doing this I thought, hey, I can make saddle pads with designer pads and do the same thing, the pocket and still use the thin line pads and Gilly can have a wardrobe of clothes to wear!

So "Gilly Wear" was formed and I started collecting fabric.....which isn't hard for me because I used to be a quilter.  A quilter on break, I took 10 years off to do rug hooking and now I am quilting again, this time saddle pads!

                       

Here is Gilly modeling, this is all he does, a pad that I had put pockets on for the ThinLine pads, which I later changed, more on that later(see PS at bottom). I got this fabric at the local fabric store, love the red Chinese symbols on the black background. I made the pattern from my fitted dressage pad, above, but added a square back to it. So it fits my 18" seat saddle really well, this I call the small pad.

Here is a close up shot of the pad. Machine quilted in a 2" grid pattern. I made the black bias binding and the red bias trim too.

This pad I bought because I wanted a larger pad, it's only longer across the back than the one above but I added some really gorgeous fabric that I bought from a quilt shop, more expensive than the local JoAnn store but wow, pretty!

Close up of this one, I am not usually attracted to bright colors like this but, hey, it had horses on it so I had to get it and there was a matching horse fabric also. Of course I got it too.

Even closer! I did free motion machine quilting on it, around each horse head. Oh, I do love it!!! I only got half a yard so there isn't enough to make a full pad.......sigh.....may have to go get some more of this and this is really bad......this quilt shop is only a few miles from home! Where do you think I will be hanging out with the delivery truck comes with more fabric???? (I saw one of the gals that works there at a quilt meeting the other night and she says, "Hey Jane...we got some new horse fabric in!") Oh, boy, they got my number! LOL

Here is another pad I made, Gilly doesn't get to model the ones I plan on selling but this one is the same size as the black and red one. The patch at the bottom is the matching fabric that goes with the one above. There are either two or three more designs in the fabric for more interesting designs too. The purple fabric was from the JoAnn store but it sure matches the purple in the quilt fabric! The batting I used in this one is a high loft so it's puffier than the first one, the low loft is much easier to quilt.

I was going to make some bell necklaces for hoses too but then decided that the long necklace is a lot of work and a bit pricey since I use glass beads and semi precious stones so I decided to make a smaller string of bells and beads. I don't have one ready to show just yet but will have soon. I am also working on a little web site for the "Gilly Wear" pads and bells that are called "trail riding Liberty Bells". The name of our farm is Liberty Homestead Farm and we live in Liberty Township so....guess where I got the name? Also my hooks rug business is called "Liberty Homestead Rugs"

I do have a business card made up, what do you think? It took me awhile to decide on the colors but I find that this year I am loving purple! I seem to be drawn to a lot of purples everywhere I look, is that a popular color this year?

My neighbor, Kim, rides western and wants me to make her a western pad so yesterday we found some really neat fabric and ordered it. When I have it finished I will post it so you all can see it, I guess Messina will have to model the western pads and I'll have to call it "Messina Wear West"......LOL

The catchy phrase I came up with for "Gilly Wear" is this:  "It's What Your Horse Wants to Wear"

OK so this is the "END" of this post........

I am off to the sewing room to get busy on some more saddle pads!!! This is a good rainy, dreary day here in Ohio and these are the days I love to be in my sewing room creating!!!

Later,

Jane

PS~I have decided that I don't need to make pockets for each saddle pad for Gilly. I just made a small thin pad with pockets, still has to be open for extra shims, to lay over the pad and under the saddle. Problem solved!

More big tree clean up

Our neighbor, Randy in the bucket of the backhoe watching Mike getting ready to pull a part of the huge oak out of the creek. This was a couple of weeks ago and we all worked for 5 hours cleaning up some of the mess.  Didn't get it all done though.

Mike, Randy and Craig all looking over what is still in the creek. They had just gotten out a big log that had been down in the water. You can see all that is left up on the hill yet to be removed. 

Big log coming out of the creek. It's a good thing they got it out cause a few days later we had on heck of a rain storm and it flooded the road and took a lot of the debris with it. I mean cleaned it off and removed some of the dirt on top of the rock baskets in the creek bank. The big log remained and this weekend Mike and I got it cut up and taken to the neighbors. Now the bank is clean again, but there are some holes I have to fill. It was a great weekend to be outside, wish I had been riding Gilly instead of cleaning up tree trash!

I am hoping that the coming week is nice, I wanna ride! Poor Gilly though, he has a lot of winter hair and gets pretty hot real quick. Poor outa shape slug.....LOL....just like me!!!
Jane