NMTM – Progress Report #4

I’ve had a lot of setbacks since I last posted about my NMTM project. Lately I’ve been dealing with a lot of foot-related pain ranging from annoying to severe, so that’s been a major distraction, especially since I’m on my feet all day at work.

However I did manage to get some straps skived and attached, mainly the lead and side reins:

And yes, there are two different colors of lace there, because, suprise! I’m out of the darker stuff and didn’t want to wait for another batch to arrive in the mail. Grrr! So now my set’s got a mix of brown shades and it’s annoying but eh, moving onward!

Another setback was that my original plan for making the surcingle wasn’t going to work at all. I wanted to make it out of leather lace, but the stuff I have just wasn’t wide enough. I decided to go with tooling leather but another surprise! Mine wasn’t long enough, as I’m making a surcingle from one long strap.

Sooo a leather order was placed, which turned out to be a really good thing in the end:

More straps were cut and skived. It’s tough to show progress at this point since everything’s being loosely held in place, waiting for final adjustments and the surcingle to be completed:

I’m really glad I went with the tooling leather for the surcingle. This piece is about 12 inches long… I did have to trim it down later but I always think it’s better to have too much than not enough! My photos make it look black, but it’s really a nice chocolate brown that (almost) matches my lace.

The padding underneath was an experiment that I made up as I went along. Looking back, I think I would do some things differently but that’s the good thing about trying something new, right?

Anyway, it was made by gluing together layers of felt, cut slightly smaller than the width of the strap.

They were covered by stretching a thin piece of skiver over the top, and using a small ball/dotting tool to get in all the tight spots. I trimmed off the excess afterward, and while the result isn’t terribly neat, I like how it looks.

Here’s the finished surcingle, crupper, and back strap. (or whatever that piece is really called…) I may redo the crupper later as this one really bothers me. I was  glad to find that Woodbridge can have an actual crupper instead of a faux one though – hooray for no sticky wax!

Here it is on the horse – I think it’s done! I do have to make the flights and ribbons, and get more detailed photos too, but yeah!