Update on Somerset

Somerset has been sitting quietly in the corner of my room for a few months now. I’ve been cleaning and moisturising the remaining leather, in the hope that some of it might be salvageable.

Over the holidays, I finally was able to drive down to Brisbane and take Somerset in to be assessed by Wendy Tidbold, who is a professional sidesaddler. The verdict was grim.

None of the leather is salvageable, it needs to be stripped down to the tree and built back up again using new materials. The cost for this would be the same, if not more, than getting a brand new one custom-made.

Also, Somerset’s tree is the old fashioned sort so harder to ride in, and harder to fit a horse to. And it’s all too big for me, about an inch and a half too big.

However I had lots of fun checking out Wendy’s collection of saddles, and drooling over the new ones she’s made.

So I came home and decided to strip Somerset down to the tree myself. At least this way I get to learn about saddle construction, and the tree will be far easier to store without all the lumps of old leather.

Sadly I didn’t photograph me removing the rest of the leather. It was quite interesting, especially the fixed head. It was wrapped with the cream checked wool fabric and the stuffing was built up to provide the different raised areas around the embroidered part.

Cutting away the old seat webbing. The shaping for the head and seat are still present – it’s very thick, folded leather.

The tools of my trade – needle nosed pliers and a bread and butter knife.

Inside of the fixed head – compacted fluff still stuck around the nail holes

Can you see the crack at the base of the fixed head?

Oh no! A crack! Where all those nails are

But the head is still firmly in place and there’s no movement. On inspection, it seems that the whole tree is made of laminated pieces of wood, and maybe that the head was constructed separetely? The raised cantle is seperate too. The things I learn!

Each nail had to be individually prised out

Cantle, with the crupper ring. The join in the wood is visible on the bottom right

The old-fashioned roller bar stirrup assembly. And the screw for the leaping head

Light reinforcing through the gullet. Look at all those nail holes!

 

The underside of the gullet is also reinforced lightly.

The broken point. Here you can see what the wood looks like, without the brown paint.

The naked tree!

No cutback head, but it’s a reasonable height and reasonable width

Then I tried to work out what to do about the layer of cheesecloth, stuck down with brown… paint? I understand saddlers used to use cheesecloth and shellac to bind saddle trees, but this isn’t laquery, it’s like nasty paint.

I decided to try sanding it off. Didn’t shift my cup of tea at first.

Sanding scum, floating on my cup of tea

Sanding the top layers of brown muck off revealed more cheesecloth

The tree was bound with cheesecloth, then painted in… paint? Something dark brown and nasty, to stick it all down. I assume this was to give it more strength

 

Sanding got rid of the rough wooden edges, but didn’t really remove the brown paint. It just made dirty powder everywhere that was all tacky. I had to hose off the tree to get rid of it all!!!

Still damp from the wash down

 

Still lots of brown muck to remove

I got some of the brown paint off – solvents are up next

So I need to hit up Bunnings for some solvents. But since I have no idea what the brown gunk is, I don’t know which solvent to use!

Somerset’s custom-made cover

Three things I love : sewing, sidesaddles and history. How excited was I when I saw that the Historical Sew Fortnightly had a challenge that I could do something for?

The theme was Flora and Fauna, which I have loosely interpreted as being appropriate for a horsey-print canvas sidesaddle cover for Somerset. Because she was looking rather sad, dusty and messy in the corner of my room.

So, to find a pattern.
Hmm.
There are none.

So I browsed the interwebs, and had very helpful people like Leila Marvin, Sarah Parry and Suzy VanderPeer  send me photos and info about genuine, turn of the century covers.

Basically, in the days before elastic, covers were made-to-measure for each saddle.

A very nice, fitted vintage sidesaddle cover.

Erk. Look at all those tricky angles! The cover was slashed under the leaping head so you could get it on and off the heads. Many were piped around all the edges, and had split pigskin keepers, reinforcing and/or accents.

I’d never drafted something myself before, and to be honest, a sidesaddle cover was a hard thing to start with. But that’s never stopped me before….

I pinned paper over the saddle, using photos to guide how it was pieced together

Unfortunately I didn’t have butchers paper to hand. I did have tissue paper, which was a PAIN to work with around a very playful kitty

Luckily Nibbles can be distracted with her new favourite thing – the washing basket!

This gave me a whole bunch of pattern pieces. The rectangular piece is upside down, I had to recut it

Nibbles decided the fabric needed to be killed. She is the left upper lump, and whenever I tried shifting the fabric she’d go crazy

Pinned the fabric back to the saddle

I had to adjust it quite a bit. Turns out tissue paper falls differently from canvas

I fussed a lot with the pins, then realised I had to make all these outside-facing seams become inside-facing. I pricked my fingers HEAPS

Then I started sewing. So far all was going well, but for some reason (it seemed logical at the time) I put the heads pieces together first, then tried attaching all the bigger pieces to that. It didn’t work. Everything pulled out of shape and it was awful.
I guess it was like trying to make a sleeve, then sew the rest of the dress around it.

I ended up unpicking almost everything, attaching the sides to the seat, then last of all the heads. It worked better.

It makes Somerset look so much tidier

I used two ribbons i cut off a shirt – you know those annoying ‘hanger’ straps sewn to the shoulders that always peep out of your neckline? I found a use for them!

I did some shaping to this side but it’s hard to spot

The fit of the heads isn’t perfect, but I’m still pleased with my effort

I’m really pleased!!!!!

Obviously it isn’t finished. That’s because Somerset isn’t finished. When she has flaps, flocked panels and girthing her underside will be a completely different shape to what it is now. So I can’t exactly ‘fit’ the cover to something that has yet to exist.

I’ve left heaps of extra material on the edges, and have about 2m of the canvas left. So when Somerset is finished (sometime in the never-never) I can finish the cover to match her.

Wonderful wedding

Oh the wedding was INCREDIBLE! Such, such a fantastic time, and everything was perfect – the weather, the location, the outfits, the people, the food, the drink.

My plans to wear the two dresses went awry, as it turned out the ceremony and reception were in the same place :-p so I just wore the Vionnet dress. However, I didn’t have a suitable hat and it was extremely sunny. A quick visit to the most amazing Napier art deco hat shop, and I left with a rather expensive but fabulous white hat.

Not really 1920s but oh well. And it wasn’t until later that day I realised it was a basic hat, with the brim folded up and stitched down. I’ll be making some more of those soon!

There are no brilliant ‘dress’ photos of me from the wedding, but I’m in a couple of group shots.

The hat doesn’t really go, but was brilliant at keeping the sun off my face.

Me and my big brother, who looks remarkably like a Kraut. He used my brown eyebrow pencil to make his little moustache

About to sing at the ceremony

The next day I wore the purple dress to the post-wedding breakfast, and out to Hastings to visit my great-aunt. There are some photos but I don’t know who has them on their cellphone.

Sadly the Vionnet dress has not survived the wearings very well – my lazy hemming quickly frayed beyond the seam and I now have raw edges appearing. I’m going to destruct the dress and use the material as lining for skirts etc. But I am seriously thinking of making it again and doing it properly, making it shorter so more flattering on me, and belting the waist. I do have a ball coming up!

Madame Vionnet’s jabot dress

I have been sewing whilst in Hervey Bay, yes I have.
My cousin’s wedding is in a few weeks time. I will have to rush to get there – sit exam, drive to the airport, hopefully make the flight, land in the early hours, sleep on the floor in the airport, catch an early morning flight. I should get there 6 hours before the ceremony.

The wedding is Art Deco themed, which is wonderful (I love dressing up) and awful (I look terrible in shapeless dresses).

I far prefer 1940s or 50s fashion, it suits me so much more. But oh well.

Also, finding patterns for 1920s dresses is much harder. In the end I decided upon this dress, which afterwards I found was from 1919 so Edwardian/Art Deco. But it looked easy to sew and I could make it flattering on me.

It’s a very simple design

There’s no real pattern, but I found an online tutorial on how to make it, at We Sew Retro - http://wesewretro.com/2012/05/20-minute-1920s-dress/ 

It took me a while to understand the instructions, but eventually I got it.

1) Basically, you get four square pieces of fabric, with a length of 1m on the diagonal. Took me FOREVER to work out that I needed around 0.70m along each side to achieve the 1m diagonal. It seems I have forever forgotten high school calculus.

2) You hem all sides of the square.

3) Lay one square on top of another, wrong sides together. Stitch across one corner asymetrically. This will leave a triangle flap on the right sides of the fabric.

4) Unfold, and on one square lay another square, wrong sides together again. Stitch across the far corner asymetrically again. You will have a chain of three squares joined together, with triangle flaps on the right sides.

5) Unfold again, and lay the last square on the chain of squares you have made. Stitch again.

6) You have made a chain of four squares, attached at their pointy corners. Bring the leftmost unattached pointy corner across to the rightmost one, to turn the chain into a tube of squares. Stitch as before.

7) Now flatten the tube of squares, and stitch two top points together. These will be the shoulders.

8) Make a sash.

On the coathanger

Of course I didn’t make it as easy as that.

Firstly, the cheap satin material I brought was a complete bitch to sew. It was slippery and the weave constantly shifted. Trying to get a perfect square drove me nuts. Hemming it was hideous. I purchased a rolled hem foot for my machine but it just didn’t work. In the end I just folded the material over, straight stitched and then trimmed super-close to the edge. It looks OK but is already fraying madly.

Trying to cut straight lines of the awful material. I only snipped my duvet cover once.

I also got my sides mixed up and sewed the triangle drapey flaps to the inside. More than once. Le sigh.

I’ve also made it too big for me. I probably only needed a 0.7m diagonal. As a result it is unflatteringly long, especially combined with the dropped waistband.

Ewww dropped waist!

Teagan tried it on, and it looked fantastic on her. I think I’ll tuck or pin the longest front points into the waistband so it’s a better length on the day. And I might cheat and wear the sash around my waist, not my hips.

Much nicer!!!!

I have a white feather and pearl headband, and I need a long string of white pearls. Combined with some fingerwaves in my hair and a touch of makeup, I’ll look great at the reception.

Oh yes, this is just for the reception. The other dress I’ve already blogged about is for the ceremony! You wouldn’t wear a ball dress to a daytime function, would you?

Natural Disaster sewing

I’ve had a whirlwind start to 2013. 

• I went back to Australia. 
• Found out with 3 days notice that I needed to shift to Hervey Bay.
• My car broke it’s water pump -> blew the head gasket -> cooked the engine. She is dead. 
• Cyclone Oswald blew in and while I am (mostly) dry, theres flooding everywhere north and south of here. I think that even if I had a car, I couldn’t get out of town. 

So all this has changed my plans somewhat. 
Somerset is looking GRAND in the storage unit. I gave her another coating of oil, and I’m hoping like hell the storage place doesn’t flood. However because my car is being scrapped, I have to buy a new one – which will use all my inheritance money, and more. This means she won’t be getting refurbished this year, very sad. 

I did, however, bring Elna with me to Hervey Bay. My cousin’s Art Deco wedding is at the start of March and I am sewing myself two spiffing outfits. One for the wedding itself, and another for the evening function at the vineyards. 

The day outfit I want to be cotton, light, comfortable and have a hat. 

I quite like these ones

And I’m going to use some fabric from my stash. Hurrah!

On top, the lilac-grey rayon I got loads of for about $1 a metre.
Below, a cotton purple check from the op shop. 3.5m for $4.

So for the first time I have not got a proper pattern, and made a sketch of what I want.

This is possibly the best drawing I have done since 5th form Art Class. Despite the 8+ fingers on each hand.

I’m not completely drafting it by myself though – the Readers Digest Guide To Sewing, and the vintage guide “The One Hour Dress” is stepping me through it.

Grandad’s stash

I’m back home in wonderful, green, lush New Zealand for my 7 weeks holiday. Somerset is safely stashed away in my storage unit, sitting on the silk cushions with a blanket over her. 

For this 7 weeks I won’t be working – unlike last Christmas, where I slogged my guts out 6 days a week at a horse farm This year I really need to recuperate, my health has been really bad. 

But doing absolutely nothing ends up being quite boring. I have volunteered to transfer my Grandad’s collection of photos, slides and negatives onto digital media. 

Grandad Wally Derbyshire died earlier this year, very suddenly. He was an awesome old dude and I am going to miss him a lot. He was a woodwork teacher by trade, but a keen amateur photographer and railways enthusiast. He especially loved his ‘slides’, every now and then he’d pull them out and have a ‘slide night’ which was amazing (if a little train-heavy…). Slides haven’t lost their colours like old photographs have, so they are still crystal clear and bright – I remember exclaiming “Gosh! They had real colour back then!” when I saw a photo of my Grandma holding a fire-engine red patent leather handbag in the 1960s. 

The night before Grandad’s funeral, I hunted down the last functioning slide projector, and spent the whole afternoon sorting through about 1000 slides by hand, picking ones that seemed relevant. Then at the big family dinner, I ran a ‘slide night’. Oh it was awesome. 

So to transfer everything into the 21st century, I bought a Epson V500 scanner. It’s a semi-professional unit that does photos, negatives and slides.

My laptop, and the Epson scanner

I have set myself up downstairs in the old garage. The view is just of the garage, but it’s cool in summer and warm when it gets cold (I love underfloor heating!)

The adapter for negatives and slides

You can also see the turned wood lampstand. Grandad made it out of different sorts of laminated native woods.

In the storage room behind me are the boxes full of Grandad’s stash.

Boxes and crates and bags and suitcases full!!! There’s three banana boxes behind the suitcase too…

Envelopes of negatives, with Grandad’s spider-like handwriting on them

Old fashioned slide viewers, and carousels for the slide projector

Sooooooo many slides… all these boxes are full!

So I have a LOT of work on my hands. It’s going to take lots longer than 7 weeks to do (especially since I plan on enjoying my life as well) so I am trying to work out a strategy of attack.

I think I will start with the old photo albums, as they are the most delicate. And they contain the best stuff too.

My Grandad (left) and his younger brother (right) on their Super Snipe motorbikes. Apparently they were the hottest things in Dargaville!

I’m working on getting a watermark put onto the scans, as some of Grandad’s photos are professional-level and I’d hate to see them tossed around the interwebs.

Meg will be keeping me company

 

Naming day

I feel that the saddle needs a name. Currently I call it ‘the saddle’ or ‘my saddle’.

Firstly I thought it should be called “Miss Piggy” because I think the seat and pommels are made from pigskin. But as the saddle has darkened it somehow doesn’t fit anymore.

Since it’s made on a Somerset tree, I think I should call it ‘Somerset’. Or, it came from somewhere west of Condobolin – but that’s a bit of a mouthful.  So until I think of a better name, it is Somerset.

Condobolin – miles from effing anywhere, and where Somerset was found

Source of all the dirt on Somerset. Endless, endless, red dirt.

 

The gentle moisturising and sponging is continuing, but I think I’ll only get the little flaps straightened out next year. I really want to save them and I’ll have to do it slowly and carefully.

In the meantime I’m preparing it for storage. I noticed that since I’ve removed all the flock and the panels (Linda Fleming informs me that it was wool roving, not horsehair in the panels, which is slightly less romantic) Somerset doesn’t sit on the purple saddle stand properly – all the weight goes through the gullet. That will not do.

In place of flocked panels….. silk cushions

I needed to pad up the other two bars somehow. I have silk cushions I brought back from Thailand. Two, safety pinned and knotted together under the central bar make pretty good padding. Really I should have found an old pillow or something, but this saves me packing the cushions up. And Somerset deserves some luxury after all these years of deprivation.

What luxury!

On top of my gold-striped maroon thai silk cushions goes a cheap lime green IKEA throw, and Somerset nestles nicely on top.

Introducing…… Somerset!

She looks so different to the saddle that arrived in the post.

I do hope that Wendy can re-use the safe, pommels, offside purse lid and both little flaps. Ideally the remaining leather from the seat can be reworked into the offside purse pouch too. And I also hope that she can rebalance the saddle so that it doesn’t place so much weight on the loins, which these old saddles did – because I do want to ride Somerset.

I have gingerly hovered over the top of her and I think she’ll fit me to a T. She won’t be for everyday riding, but for special occasions like displays and shows. I’ll have to get something newer and more rugged for bashing about in. One day……….