Strap One On

Whew!  Lately so little time for myself.  But I had a couple hours to call my own this afternoon, and it is 90 degrees and humid and I'm tired...so I thought I'd work on some new straps for holding my saddle pommel bags (which are actually cantle bags) onto the pommel without a bunch of ugly dangling straps.  For the purpose of this project I used this gawd-awful orange and black clashing thread----nice....but I hate how the bags come with all those long dangling straps and you tie 'em here, and tie 'em there, and it is like a disordered plate of pasta when you are done, and getting it back off is a pain as you reverse the process.  The cure?

CUT THEM SUCKERS OFF!

Yep, just get out your handy scissors and neatly trim the most offending danglers right off of there.

Here is what I had holding my bags on and it did a fine job, Still quite useful, but kind of ugly (which has never stopped me ) but I wanted to de-stress by being creative today.

Pretty...isn't it?

So two of what you see in front there have been holding my bags securely to my pommel for a couple of years now.  But they were sun-bleached, fraying, and had been hit by the ugly stick, so I thought I'd try to remake some today using some of the stuff you see in the back.   Today's project is the orange print cut into 2 -4inch X 21 inch strips, and additionally 2- 3 1/2 inch X 10 inch strips, 2 d-rings, and one pack of the velcro (5/8 inch width X 30 inches long).

So first I had to cut the stuff.

I didn't put too much (well none actually) into matching pattern for the purpose of this project.

To finally come up with something that looks like this

The strap wraps the pommel and velcro attaches to itself.  The added D rings will hold something light-weight like a little flash light, or glow sticks.   The cure, for the dreaded knotted, twisted, dangling, saddle pack straps.

Now my do-overs?   I plan to make some in the lime green.  I will match the thread in hopes of it being less obvious, and I have some slightly wider industrial velcro and I may use that.  what I used is going to hold fine, but if I use the industrial velcro the D rings will have considerable holding power and will be more useful in pinch to hang a broken hoof boot, or heavier thing to them without worry of attachment.  An alternative would be double strip velcro in what I used.  They are easy to make, and easy to apply, you can whip your bags on or off, readjust in seconds.

If you don't enjoy being crafty...nylon dog collars with the plastic clip would work perfectly for this use.    You can get these kind with a place for information like your phone # contact info.   They adjust so you can get them snug, and would be the perfect quick solution.


 Next project...I have a pet peeve with my water bottle holder.