Hand Me Downs -Take 2

My attempt at salvaging Phantom's old Rambo fly sheet to use this summer on Stitch was a fail. The mesh started shredding along the bound edge on his butt. When I stitched the binding on, I didn't do anything to the edge of the mesh which is where I think I went wrong. I think that the mesh edge needed to be rolled or folded first so that the binding would have something to grip onto and not just pull away.

Oh well, it only cost me $5 and some time. I was going to try to salvage it once again and finish the edges differently, but since there were a couple of spots that the mesh was shredded a couple of inches I don't think I had enough fabric to work with as his butt was already poking out.

So, on to the next hand me down option.

The circus tent fly sheet.

This one came from Greenhawk last year. It's a textilene sheet that was on sale for $50 or $60. My motto for horse clothing is that the cheaper it is, the prettier the colour gets. But I still think it looks like a circus tent.

It's probably about 2 sizes too big still for Stitch, but since he's filled out quite a bit and now has boobs and a butt (not much yet, but way more than he did in the spring) it didn't completely hang off of him around the neck. I can deal with the extra length over his tail, but because of that length it hung a bit low around his hind legs. 

I just made a couple of temporary adjustments to the blanket to render it wearable. A dart in the neck closed it up enough in the front. Don't try this at home kids unless you have a beast of a sewing machine! Six layers of webbing and three layers of textilene pushed the limits of my heavy-duty machine - thankfully it only needed about an inch of stitching that I could baby it through. 

To solve the length around the hind legs I chose to just fold up the corners and stitch around the edges. It will keep the excess from hanging too low, and next year I can take the stitches out and the original shape of the blanket will be restored.

I might have to deal with a bit of poop on the leg strap clips, but that's minor.

So far this has worked out much better than the Rambo. That one survived only a couple of days before shredding, and Stitch has been wearing the circus tent for a couple of weeks with no issues.

The other hand me down that has been getting use is Phantom's PS of Sweden bridle.

It fits Stitch nicely and looks great on him, though I have to change the browband on it - that was Phantom's for a long time.

He seems happy so far in the Sprenger Dynamic KK bit that I tried first so we'll see if that ends up being the bit we start with. His teeth will be getting done next week and then we can get serious about learning big boy things - the countdown is on to be sitting on him in September!