Riding in style

Haha its better than I thought it would be! 

Here is my pile of riding equipment. Helmet, gloves, half chaps, and - wait, where are my boots? Ah. They're hanging out in that nifty bag over there. I got this urge to make a lined drawstring bag to keep my boots separated from the rest of my equipment because boy they get dirty! Shavings and arena dust on (or in!) my helmet is not my idea of a good time. And when I stopped putting them in the duffel bag, I was getting said shavings and dust all over my trunk. Even less good. The car gets dirty enough on the outside without bringing it inside, too.

I used Jeni Baker's lined drawstring bag tutorial as a guideline for steps and sort of winged it as far as the dimensions go. I lined the bag with cuts from an outdoor tablecloth I picked up. I liked the paisley design, the colors, and the price! Reasonable for such a big piece of 'fabric'. A good chunk of the rest of this tablecloth is waiting to be transformed into a garment bag. The best part? It's coated. This way the dirt, dust, mud, shavings, what-have-you will be easy to clean out of the bag periodically.

Here is a picture from this weekend of the front panel embroidery in-progress. I had this vision in my head of a horse contentedly grazing underneath a tree, but wasn't sure if I would be able to accomplish it in felt. I tried anyway, and am pretty pleased with the results. I might go back and do some more detail on the horse, but I originally had a silhouette in mind. (Turns out I have no black felt, so he's a gray.) I don't want it to have too much in the way of long satin stitches or anything, like for a mane or tail, because it's going to get thrown around the car, tack room, and just generally abused so it would end up pulled and looking like heck anyway. It will probably just stay this way.

I am definitely tickled at how the tree turned out, though. I just cut out the leaves improvisationally and put them all down where I wanted on my sketched out tree trunk. Then I took a picture and referred to that as I went back and sewed down the layers in the proper order with running stitches. 

This was one of those projects I had in my head before thinking about whether or not it would be achievable, but it turned out really nice. I'm pleased. It is something that I will likely be using just about every day, and I am doubly happy that I will be able to take a little piece of creative whimsy with me to my "other" hobby.

Linking up to Free Motion by the River for a new (to me) link party and Finish It Up Friday. If you're reading this from there, thanks for clicking through!