Clean Seams and a Flap - a Pony Pouch Tutorial

Several people have asked how I made the clean seams and overlapping flap in my pony pouches without having the seam curve under.

 Like this one - see how the flap is turned inward by the seam?

This is much better, and it is really easy to do. First, cut out a piece of fabric. For a standard Traditional-sized pony pouch, I cut it 16x28 inches.

Because I do not like to use velcro, I make a longer flap, one that will stay folded down without needing a fastener of some sort. (While there is a way to put the scratchy side of velcro away from the model, there is still a risk that contact could be made with my models so I never use velcro.)

Taking a seam gauge, I set it about 1/4 inch away from the corner of one edge of the wrong side of the fabric.

Then I use a chalk pencil to mark across the 5 inch mark and then draw a line from that mark down to the edge of the fabric. Be sure to do this on the other side of the seam gauge. This will be my cutting line after the seams are stitched.

I do the same thing on the other corner. Now I have two cutting marks, one on either side of the 16 inch edge.

Right sides together, I stitch a quarter inch seam all along the pony pouch leaving an opening to turn the fabric right side out. 

I also use those chalk marks as a sewing guide, stitching 1/4 inch alongside them.

 This is how the stitching lines look on the fleece side. See how I have made a flap?

 Again using the chalk lines as a guide, I cut on them as I trim my seams all around the pony pouch.

 These next couple of steps are very important and skipping them will make turning the fabric right side out difficult.

Take some small, sharp scissors and clip the angle between the stitching line and the edge of the fabric. (The scissors are placed to point to that cut.) This allows the fabric to move and turn more easily.

 Then I carefully trim the fabric down some in that little angle.

It may not look pretty, but it will be on the inside of the pouch so no one will ever see it. And, it will make your finished pony pouch lay flat and look much more polished.

Turn your fabric right side out. After I do that, I insert this tool and use the rounded end to push the fabric out in all the corners, including the flap corners, so that they start to lay flat. (This tool comes in bags of polyfil and is used for stuffing pillows and crafts. You can use any small rounded tool. Your finger, too.)

 Now the corners are crisp and sharp. 

 I iron both sides of the pony pouch. The flap looks good and is 5 inches - long enough to fold over and stay folded.

The opening where I turned the fabric right side out (where the scissors are pointing) needs to be closed. Some people do it by hand, but I find it easy to catch when I stitch up the sides.

 I bring the bottom up and match the bottom corners with the flap edges.

 I put a pin in to show where I will stitch the sides together. It's about midway between the edge of the side and the edge of the flap. This is because we now have four layers of fabric in this new seam, and when we turn them, that seam will be bulky. Leaving that space allows room for the bulk after turning.

 I make sure I know where that opening is on the side where I turned the fabric and watch carefully to be sure I stitch it closed as I sew the seam.

 Finished and ready to turn!

Turned and ready to be pressed one last time.

 Done and all ready to be used for a live show! 

I hope that helps those who asked about it. If you still have questions, let me know in the comments or you can message me on Facebook.

The Gillespie Horses

Down the road from my parents' home was a double pasture with a two stall barn tucked up against the moraine. High above on the moraine was the home of the Gillespies, the family that owned the barn and pastures.

Susan Gillespie was about eight years older than me and attending college at the time. Since she no longer lived at home, I was hired to come over twice a day and check the horses, fill the trough, and toss down hay and grain.

I loved it. (And it was much more fun than my other job, babysitting.)

 The double pastures looking from the barn down to the Wabash. When the water flooded and poured into the bottom pasture, I would close the gate and keep the horses in the top pasture. 

The barn with the Gillespie house behind it up on the moraine. Their home was accessed by a road up there and they used a path through the woods to get down to the barn.

When I began caring for Susan's horses, there were two mares who were sisters - Sycamore Lass and Scojeadon. Scoj's name was a combination of Susan's nickname (Scottie) with the names of her two best friends, Jean and Donna. 

Sadly, early in my time of caring for them, Sycamore Lass caught her leg in the slats of the divider between the two stalls and broke it. Susan was home at the time and is the one who actually found her. Lass had to be euthanized and I still remember the tears streaming down Susan's face when I arrived on the scene and she told me what had happened. The divider between the two stalls was removed immediately.

To keep Scoj company, the Gillespies purchased a donkey - Jose. He was a fun little guy and lived up to everything I had ever heard about donkeys. Sassy and smart, hard to catch, a loud brassy bray... I loved him!

Scoj was bred and foaled a colt one spring morning after a nighttime storm. It was the first foal I had ever been around, and I discovered him when I arrived for the morning check. I remember excitedly running home and calling Mr. Gillespie to let him know that the foal had arrived. The Gillespies named him Stormy and I got to watch him grow up. 

Stormy as a yearling with Scoj in the background.

 Scoj and Stormy in the winter.

Naturally, I did name two model horses after the Gillespie herd.

This is Sycamore Lad.

 And this is Scojeadon. 

When I went off to college, Leslie took over for me and began caring for the Gillespies' horses. I do not remember what happened to Scoj, Stormy, and Jose but I will ask her and find out and post it here.

A Hopeful Future

Yesterday I said I would write about the horses I cared for while in junior and high school for today's post, but something happened that lifted my heart and I wanted to share it here.

Late in the afternoon I drove out to the barn for Abby's daily carrot run, and as I pulled into the lane to the new barn,  I saw that Tim had hitched his truck to the trailer.

I asked him where he was going, but just as he began to answer, he got a phone call that he needed to take. 

To give him some privacy, I walked around the new barn and down to the northeast pasture to visit with Abby and Sultanna.

Sultanna has started coming any time I call up Abby, but I don't mind. (Abby is licking peppermint juice off the bars of the gate. Again.)

When his phone call was over, Tim joined me at the trough. He had a halter and lead rope in hand. I had a pretty good idea as to who was going somewhere and why, and Tim confirmed that - Sultana was going off to be bred!

About eight days after giving birth, a mare will have what is called a foal heat, her first heat since foaling. It's a good time to rebreed the mare, and so Tim was preparing to haul her to the stable that owns the stallion she was bred to last time. She will come home as soon as we know she is in foal, so it could be a month or two before we see her again.

And that means that next spring we will have another foal in the nursery paddock.

I will miss her - as Sultanna's pregnancy progressed, I spent a lot of time with her and grew very fond of her. But it will be nice, even healing, to have a new baby to look forward to.

Dad's Slides - Winter Horse Work

It was 93 degrees yesterday and temperatures did not cool off until after 9:00 PM. I was hibernating inside as I looked through some of my Dad's old photos. This one gave me pause and made me smile.

That's my first horse trailer after we received 19 inches of snow! Look behind the telephone pole and you can see the Wabash River. As soon as that heavy snow began to melt, that river would rise and flood the road making it so that we were unable to leave home.

Having our home high up on the moraine protected us from the floodwaters, but getting up the driveway in the winter was a bear. 

We'd get as far as we could, then stop and hike the rest of the way up to the house. 

There was no running water down to the pastures. That wasn't a problem in the spring, summer and fall - I'd just run a hose down to the troughs to fill them up. But in the winter, I filled buckets from the spigot in the garage and carried that water down the moraine. More than once I slipped on the icy path and spilled the buckets. Which, of course, made the hike down to the pastures even more hazardous because that water froze on the path.

See that line across the snow in our front pasture? Those are my tracks. Not only did I have our horses to care for, I looked after the neighbor's horses and donkey who were down the road a ways. I remember slogging through that heavy, wet snow in the pasture as I hiked down to their barn and back.

I look back now and remember how hard some of those winter days were. I remember the bruises from falling while carrying water buckets, the complete changes of clothes that I had to do before catching the school bus, and shivering in the cold while tossing hay to the horses. It was hard work.

But, it was also horse work. And that was what I loved. 

Tomorrow I'll share about the horses and donkey down the road.

Horse Trailers

I love horse trailers. When I was younger and we were out driving on the road and our car approached one, I would plead with my parents to speed up so that I could peek in the back at the horse. Then I'd ask them to pass the trailer so that I could see if I could spy the horse's head as we went past. 

Before I had my own horse, my parents used to take Leslie and me to local shows so that we could watch. They'd drop us off for the day, give us some money to buy lunch, and then come back around 5:00 to pick us up.

These local shows were mostly western classes with a few halter classes at the beginning, and always at the end was the crowd favorite, the Jack Benny Class. Jack Benny was an older comedian at the time so the class was for older riders. There was a lot of good natured ribbing and cheering of the exhibitors as that class was in the ring. 

Leslie and I would watch the classes and wander the show grounds, looking at the trailers, and the horses, and dreaming of the day that we might be on the show grounds with our own rig and horses.

The Hoffine family had my favorite trailer. It was a four horse trailer with a dressing room similar to this one. When they rolled into the show grounds, Leslie and I would stop and watch. 

Best of all, the family's name was emblazoned across the sides. Leslie and I thought that that was the ultimate in horsedom - a trailer that hauled more than two horses and that had your name on it? Such grandeur!

(Funny aside, I have had a lot of physical therapy over the years, and my physical therapist is Dusti Hoffine Chase! She saw my horsey necklace at one of my first appointments and she mentioned that she was a horsey gal, too. When I figured out that she was a Hoffine and told her about how I thought her family's rig was the absolute ultimate, we had a good laugh, but I could also see that she was very touched.)

My dad, bless him, always supported my horsey side. After I got my first horse, he bought this trailer for me. 

It's a two horse one, and he painted it in the colors that I wanted and replaced the floorboards. (It was a homemade trailer and he wanted to be sure it was safe. Thanks, Dad!) I was thrilled to have it!

Then a few years later, he upgraded to a commercial trailer. I only have two photos of that trailer; this one is of me in front of it when I was cleaning it out and was taken the summer of 1975. 

Here is another photo of it taken around 1985. I was married with kids and we were living in Illinois. Our church was having a 4th of July BBQ and I hauled Indy into town to give rides. From left to right, that's Mountain Mama Jessica, Denver Daughter Sarah, and my horsey Finnish friend, Merja Voutilainen's daughter, Maria.

Those are the only two trailers I have ever owned. I never got that big rig with my name emblazoned on it like the Hoffines had. But that's okay. If I need to haul Abby, I can use Tim's trailer.

 Tim's tailer parked on the east side of the new barn.

And you know what? Even after all these years, I still get excited when I see a horse trailer on the road. I still try to draw close to it so that I can catch a glimpse of the horses inside.

I don't think I will ever outgrow that thrill.

Pony Pouches! Second Post of the Day

Every year I hold Happy Trails, a small live show/pony party, in my home the first weekend of June. This year I am celebrating my 50th year in the formal hobby, and I had big plans and some surprises for Happy Trails. 

Due to the pandemic, Happy Trails had to be canceled. I was disappointed, but I figured we could still hold it virtually like BreyerFest. (On a MUCH smaller scale, of course.) I put the class list online and invited my friends to post their photos in class albums. 

And while Happy Trails may not be happening live, I am still sending out swag bags, giving out ribbons, and have one more treat for all who enter.

Pony pouches! All entrants will receive a pony pouch made by me, even if they entered just one photo.

I made myself a set in orange fleece about ten years ago. I also have a couple of Breyer pony pouches and some made by Lori Batchelor. Amazon gift bags work in a pinch, too, although I usually bubble wrap any models I put into those.

But it is one thing to sew pony pouches for yourself and quite another to make them as gifts. I don't mind if there is a flaw in the fabric or if I have a messy seam on my own pouches, but if I am making them for friends, then I want them to be really nice. And since it has been so long since I made any, I had to sit down and figure out measurements before I could get started.

I kept notes as I worked because models, even in the same scale, differ. A Weather Girl or a Cigar model need width, whereas the Moody Saddlebred or Belgian mold need a taller pouch.

I have a roll of pattern paper from making clothes for living history reenactors, so I pulled it out and began making patterns for a variety of pony pouch sizes. (Pepper is hoping that I will play with her.)

I experimented with scale size as well as the closure. I do not like velcro closures - too risky for scratching the models. Instead, I make deeper flaps to fold over the top of the model.

These are the experimental pony pouches. I will keep all of them for myself. Their flaps are not as deep as I want them to be. A few are padded with quilt batting, another sewing staple that I have on hand. But I have padded pouches in my own stash for shows, and I find that that extra padding takes up a lot of space when the models are packed into tubs for a show. In my opinion, my plastic models do just fine without the padding. (Chinas are another story - I like the padding for them.)

I had found a basic pattern online for the experimental pony pouches. The size definitely needed tweaking, but that was an easy fix. 

What I did not like about that pattern was how the flap ended up being partially twisted in at its base.

But that was an easy fix - I adjusted my pattern and while it added a couple of steps to the stitching process, I like how the side seams no longer twist in.

The photo show is this coming Saturday, so now that I have figured out the patterns and am happy with them, I am cutting and sewing several hours a day. 

And I figure that, as long as I am at it, I will replace my old ones and maybe even make some for donations to live shows or to sell.

Plus, with all the extra fabric I have from past sewing projects, I should not have to buy any more to make my own pouches.  

Better get back to the sewing machine!

Thank You - First Post of the Day

I just wanted to say thank you to all who posted comments about Little Feller and his passing. Please know I read them all and that they meant a lot to me.

We are doing okay and moving forward. (Those are contented ears - Abby and Sultanna are chewing some peppermints.)

A second post is coming - stay tuned!