lacing up saddle skirts

[davnasca]

My thoughts would be to cut a new topline on the skirts and raise them up and lace. If the gap is 3/4", then if you fix them, it would take 3/8" on each side. Unless you have a pretty small shallow pattern to start with, that 3/8" shouldn't matter much. Cut a topline, reblock them to account for the raise, and go right on. My thoughts with a frog is that you might have problems with the stitching coming loose or tearing through. There is some flex on the skirts that is not there on the jockeys. How's everything else going with it?

No apologies necessary for going back to an old post either, in fact our collective thanks are in order. Having a topic all in one thread just makes it much more searchable. It is easier to have everyting in one place for future reference and new folks joining. We encourage everyone new or old to go back and add to old threads as necessary.

Everything else is going quite well actually, I'm following the Jeremiah Watt video series and I have the gullet, cantle back, groundwork and swell cover in. I've been taking pictures all along and when I'm done I'll post.

I'm worried that if I lift and reblock the skirts, then the corners wont lay up nice in the hand hold and if I just lift the trailing end of the skirts, they wont be level with the ground. What if I made the frog out out a lighter more flexible leather? I have some nice 10 oz stuff thats pretty soft and flexible. I also remember seeing a saddle on this forum (I think, I could be completely making this up) with skirts that didn't meet behind the cantle, they were rounded. I believe they were called swallow tail skirts. Is that an option?

Thanks!

[bruce johnson]

I would recut the whole topline of the skirts including the point that goes up into the handhole. That will raise the whole skirt front to back and keep the bottoms even, then reblock them.

There are some barrel racing mother hubbard rigs that are frogged at the back, but what I see as the difference is they are shorter skirts almost tight to the bar points, and the good ones flare up across the middles. I am still more comfortable with lacing, but that may just be me.

[DianaT]

Hi all, I'm new here and this is my 1st post. So excited to find this thread...I recently bought an old Simco barrel saddle (round skirt) that I love EXCEPT the skirts are digging down into my horse's back, as described in one of these posts. As far as I can tell the bottom skirts are not laced, and the jockeys have a patch (is that what a frog is?) holding them together. That patch thing is making the skirts angle downward.

So, my question is, what if I just take that thing (please excuse my completely un-technical terminology) off? Could it be that simple? If not, is this fixable? Or would it be simpler sell this one and find a different saddle (which sounds like a huge pain and not very simple at all to me)?

Thanks so much, nice to meet you all:)

Diana

[Randy Cornelius]

I have had a couple of emails from folks not understanding what we are talking about. I have attached some pictures to help illustrate. On the roughout, these skirts are laced all the way to the back. One problem with doing this. If the skirts do not exactly line up at the rear, the difference of even 1/16 of an inch is noticable. On mine I cut the rear corners at about a 1" or little better radius on all my skirts whether they are square or rounded. This gives a bit of relief, and allows a small side to side difference from setting the skirts to not be as noticable.

The tooled saddle is one of mine, actually my wife's. The skirts are a bit shorter than usual, but they are laced back to the start of the curve. The rear jockeys cover them up, as Greg described. On longer skirts, the non-laced areas would show more.

Bruce was going through some old posts and seen this one and was wondering if you could discribe or draw a picture on how you do this type of lacing. I have been doing this and it never comes out this good looking? Could you post some kind of instructions, hole size and spacing also? I like to lace the skirts simply because when you throw the saddle on the horse your hand don't slip through the skirts and drop the saddle.. lol

Thanks Randy

Edited April 29, 2011 by Randy Cornelius