Long Intervals

It was a happy occurrence to get onto the internet , see Harper Lee trending, realize it was for a good reason. It was announced that To Kill A Mockingbird would have a sequel  that will be out this summer. To Kill A Mockingbird is one of my favorite books and is going to be Harper Lee's first new work in more than 50 years. Breyerfest won't be the only thing I'll be looking forward to in the summer!
While it hasn't been 50 years since I've completed an English saddle, it's been a while. I feel like there is always something to improve on. So I've been working on fixing my pattern.
The last couple of weeks has surrounded the attempt to do just that.
There was this saddle. It's supposed to fit traditional ponies. I bought a couple of tooling tools and experimented with those on it. I didn't make the under flaps and the panels kind of fell short, but I learned from it and took note of the things to change.

Then there was this saddle which is to fit larger models. There's still tweaking ahead of it. I saved the pieces of this saddle and will go back to it to finish that pattern.

I finished tweaking the pony pattern today. Or I think so!

Along with the pattern I also decided to dye a piece of my lining leather purple, since purple is my favorite color. I used RIT dye.

It worked well and fast too. I didn't listen to the ratio directions and dumped dye into hot water. The back of the bottle said something about teaspoons to gallons of water. I know my ratio was far from that! :)