Triple and double stitched halters

[Mulesaw]

Earlier on I have tried to make halters with measurements from very old books, and the results were a nice looking halter that didn't fit. I guess that the size of warmblood horses have changed over the last 100 years. But using the sizes suggested by @TomE in an earlier post on this forum resulted in some really well fitting halters (link at the bottom).

The first one was made as a brown triple sewn halter, but Gustav (our son) asked if I could try to make one also in brown with just a double stitching, since he thought that it would look nice. So I made one for his other horse, and finally I made a slightly smaller black one for his girlfriends horse. 
For some reason most of the jumping horses use brown tack, and dressage horses almost exclusively uses black tack, so that's why I have used those colours.

A couple of months back I bought a pantograph for engraving stuff. And I have engraved some small name plates for the horses, and sewn those onto the halters.

Most of the sewing was done on my old Singer class 7, but a few places it was necessary to do the sewing by hand. Since the Singer is an old flatbed, I found out that the easiest way to get the sewing done was to do the noseband last. That way I could still get all the parts to be flat instead and that helped a lot. 

The edges were sanded and given a bit of Tokonole, and the halters were treated with my homemade leather grease.

The first halter, made for Cajou (Holsteiner horse)

2nd halter, for Carlo (Westfaler horse)

3rd halter, for Santos (Danish warmblood)

Homemade name tags 

Cajou grazing between two jumping sessions at a tournament.

 I followed the excellent instructions provided by @TomE in this post: 

 

[jrdunn]

Beautiful work!

[Gezzer]

Very nice !!!!!

I am with your son , I like the double stitch  a little more .

[Mulesaw]

@jrdunn

Thanks :-)

@Gezzer

Thanks :-)
I have to say that I haven't still quite decided which I like the best, but he is the "customer", so I just made it like he asked for. 
The good thing is that it is easily recognizable which halter goes to which horse, if you know what to look for. 

[Klara]

12 hours ago, Mulesaw said:

Earlier on I have tried to make halters with measurements from very old books, and the results were a nice looking halter that didn't fit. I guess that the size of warmblood horses have changed over the last 100 years. ...

Out of curiosity, were the halters too big or too small? I would think that warmbloods would have become bigger overall, but with possibly smaller heads because I think today's are more highblooded as way back when they were also used for work in the fields...

Personally, I prefer the look of the double stitched ones, my favourite being the black one. 

 

[Mulesaw]

39 minutes ago, Klara said:

Out of curiosity, were the halters too big or too small? I would think that warmbloods would have become bigger overall, but with possibly smaller heads because I think today's are more highblooded as way back when they were also used for work in the fields...

Personally, I prefer the look of the double stitched ones, my favourite being the black one. 

 

They were too small.

I used the old German book "Sattler, Riemer und Täschnerhandwerk" , and I found that the measurements were on the small side. 
Horses in general have been bred bigger, and looking at highly bred horses they still tend to be very harmonic looking. Something that is not possible if the head is either too large or too small.

Actually the size of the head can completely throw off the harmonic look of a horse. 
It is interesting, because when you look at the original breeding standards set out for the various breeds, the sizes today often exceeds the original desired size. But I think it is the same as in dog breeding. the bigger the dog is the more impressive it will look in a show ring, and it has to be an incredibly harmonic animal to outweigh the basic human awe of something that is big. And for horses it is probably out of necessity due to the human frame being bigger now than 100 years ago. So if an average sized person wants to ride today they need a horse that would have been considered large just two generations ago. 

The opposite is probably the case when it comes to work horses. But there aren't that many of those around so I don't know for sure.

The black one is very classy :-) 
 

Brgds Jonas

[TomE]

Beautiful work, @Mulesaw!  Your machine (and its operator) do a nice job sewing.  Maybe you'll be supplying halters for the German sport horse market?  

Mary and our trainer are headed to Wisconsin this morning with 2 mares and their foals for a foal inspection.  This is a "keuring" for the North American Dutch Warmblood (KWPN-NA) breed registry.  These are jumper colts who will be weaned in a month or two.  I think they're taking one bridle I made and everything else is ordinary purchased tack.  It's like the cobbler's children going barefoot.  

[Mulesaw]

@TomE

Thanks a lot for the kind words, I am still struggling to make the edges look as nice as yours does. But I was in a bit of a rush when I made the first two, because there had to be a matching set for an event at Helgstrand Dressage center. So I did the easy thing and used Tokonole :-)

I wouldn't mind doing a bit of work for the German market, but I am afraid that a place like the Von Rönne farm has got some pretty good discount deals with some of the big brands in Germany. But I could always do a lot of repairs for them.

Wisconsin is quite a bit of a trip from Saint louis, I hope they'll have great weather for driving, but given that it is later summer I bet it'll be a spectacular and beautiful trip with the trees changing colour.
Keuring is very close to the Danish word "kåring" which is used in Danish Warmblood and other breeds for the appraisal of foals and youngsters etc.

Just by having one homemade bridle will still set you greatly apart from most people at any event. So the I think you are too hard on yourself with the cobbler analogy 

Coming to think of it, I think that most of the triple sewn halter was done by hand because I started attaching the nose band and then going "round". So I couldn't make it lie flat on the sewing machine. 
On the two double stitched halters I took the noseband last. That made it a heckuvalot easier and faster. 

I'll keep my fingers crossed for your foals for the keuring.

Brgds

Jonas

[Klara]

18 hours ago, Mulesaw said:

Keuring is very close to the Danish word "kåring" which is used in Danish Warmblood and other breeds for the appraisal of foals and youngsters etc.

The German word is Körung...

23 hours ago, Mulesaw said:

But I think it is the same as in dog breeding. the bigger the dog is the more impressive it will look in a show ring,

Which is a major problem in many dog breeds, including my favourite, the borzoi. Because as show dogs rarely have to work, functionality gets lost in the search for impressive looks. A 47-kg-borzoi just can't run any more.

With horses it's not quite as bad (I hope!) because people still want to ride them and win competitions.  

 

[Mulesaw]

1 hour ago, Klara said:

The German word is Körung...

Which is a major problem in many dog breeds, including my favourite, the borzoi. Because as show dogs rarely have to work, functionality gets lost in the search for impressive looks. A 47-kg-borzoi just can't run any more.

With horses it's not quite as bad (I hope!) because people still want to ride them and win competitions.  

 

I heard that for the German Shephard, many dogs have been bred with lower hind legs, because it gives a pleasing exterior look that will win points at a show, but it gives problems with the hips and the dog is then suddenly bred for a show purpose instead of a working purpose. 

One of my acquaintances said it was a bit of a problem for the police, since they rely on the dog's working capability, so they are much more limited when it comes to breeders that they can choose from.

The same with those small snouted dogs that are bred so that they can hardly breathe anymore. 

Well, back to the horses. 
Most horses are still bred to be ridden which is good, and since we have grown over the last generations, it makes sense that the riding horses should do the same. 

Brgds

Jonas