How to Sew a Horse Blanket

It's not always in your best interest to sew your own horse clothing. Often when it comes to winter blankets one can not match the quality or price of what is commercially available right now.

However when it comes to some of the light weight items such as coolers and show sheets you can create exactly what you want and often give yourself more quality for the price compared to commercially available items. The following directions can be used for making a cooler or a show sheet.

Difficulty:

Moderately Challenging

Instructions

Things You'll Need

• Pattern. You can purchase horse blanket patterns on line or create a pattern from your horses current blanket
• Fabric- Coolers can me made out of varying weights of polar fleece, wool or a wool blend or even some of the more new techincal fabrics.
• Binding Material
• Buckles, Velcro, Snaps or other way of adhearing the front of the blanket.
• Wide strap material for the surcingle strap if desired.
• Soft braided rope and D's for the tail rope

1. 

   Measure your horse from center of chest to the point of buttock. This is the UK style of measuring for blankets and is ideal for sewing your own as this is the actual length of the blanket.

2. Choose or create your pattern. alter as you feel fit to fix any fit issues (Make neck smaller/larger, make blanket deeper or shallower). Pin to Fabric. Follow the pattern and cut and then sew the two peices of fabric together.

3. Once the blanket is sewn you may want to check the fit before finishing the blanket with the binding and strapping.

4. Sew on binding on the bottom edge. If your pattern had a seam down the back you may want to sew on a wider binding down the center for extra strength. If your planning on using this blanket on the horse un supervised a single surcingle and a tail rope are necessary. Or a surcingle and two leg straps.

Tips & Warnings

• You can find hardware for these blankets on line or through your local tack stores. Many brands sell replacement hardware/straps and these are great for making your own blankets

• take hardware off of old blankets of any size to keep costs down

• Make your first blanket out of cheap materal just to make sure you have the sizing and design correct for your horse. Try the first one on- make sure you've figured out all the fit issues and then create your actual blanket.

• Keep safety in mind. A surcingle and either tail rope or a surcingle and leg straps should be used if the blanket will be left on unsupervised.

Resources

• Suitability Patterns