When Hobbies Combine

 I love it when hobbies combine. I love to read, so reading about horses makes me happy. 

I love to poke around antique and thrift shops (well, I did pre-pandemic!), 

so finding a vintage horsey book is a triple bonus in combining three things I love.

Combining my love of sewing with my love of horses has been a little harder. Making haversacks? Certainly. I have made over 260 of them since last May.

But it was getting my embroidery machine that really ratcheted my sewing of horsey items up. 

I have found so many horsey items to make using embroidery that I ended up putting them all onto their own USB disk instead of keeping them with my other digital patterns.

Embroidering goes way beyond putting names on things.

although that has allowed me to combine horses, sewing, and family time. (And is fun, too!)

It's enabled me to branch out into making other items for Horsiemama's Mercantile. 

Right now I am experimenting with kitchen towels. For any embroidery project, I always make a couple of practice designs on cheap fabric and then cut them out and save them with notes as to what worked, what didn't, and what I wanted to change.

Then I try the real deal and do any tweaking that needs to be done.

Most days I can be found spending time in my horse room surrounded by my collection and with one of these machines going.

I love it when hobbies dovetail so nicely.