Boring saddle pad? Here's how to dress it up!

I love gorgeous saddle pads. You know, the ones with double trim or plaid bindings or something special that makes you go "oooh!" when you see them? Yeah, those. Love them. But they're expensive, and I already have a bunch of perfectly serviceable (if boring) pads. What's a girl to do?

Enter a rainy day, the sewing machine, and my embarrassingly large collection collection of fabric scraps and trim. I had a hunter green AP pad and a chocolate brown dressage pad that wanted a little something more. So I started digging around to see what would work.

Love the gold brocade with the hunter green. The two types trim add a little extra flair, and will cover up the edges nicely.

This fabric scrap is leftover from the kitchen curtains in our old house. Time to use it up! 

To get started, cut out the triangle of fabric, then overcast the edges to keep them from fraying. I use the zigzag setting on my sewing machine - if you have a serger, that would work too.

Next, fold the long edge of the triangle over an stitch it to itself. Use matching thread to sew your trim over that, being sure to cover up your stitches. (Note that I've also sewn across the end of the trim to keep it from fraying.)

Lay out your triangle on your saddle pad. I lined up the left and bottom edge of the triangle with the left and bottom edge of the pad. This gave me plenty of fabric to turn under.

Here's the hardest part - you need to go around and turn the edges of the fabric under, pinning as you go. You'll top stitch this later.

Here's the final thing, all pinned down and ready to be sewn. Use as many pins as you need to hold the fabric in place and prevent it from wrinkling.

Here's what it looks like after it's been sewn down. 

Finally (not shown), stitch the thinner trim down all the way around. Tuck the edges under the point of the triangle on one side, to keep them from fraying.

The finished product. Way fancier than what we started with! 

I ended up using some plain gold fabric I had instead of the trim I had originally picked out, but I think this worked better.

If I were going to do this again, I would use an iron-on fusible interfacing to stiffen the fabric and make it easier to work with. The gold triangle got a little wiggly on the long side as I was sewing it down, and it's not the crisp, straight line I was hoping for. I would also be a little more careful in matching my thread colors - I didn't do too bad a job with what I had on hand, but having your thread be invisible means that any screw-ups aren't quite as noticeable (ahem).

The green pad took me significantly longer than the brown one, in part because I was still figuring out how to assemble everything. Sewing is half geometry, I swear! Anyway, I spent about 5 hours on both pads, but that included trying to find all my trim and fabric. It did NOT include cleaning out our hall closet, lol! 

I realize that this is not the best step-by-step tutorial ever. I just sort of got to sewing and forgot to take pictures! If anyone is interested in better instructions, I can do that in another post with another project. Just let me know!  

I've got another pad - made from scratch - in the works too. Pictures to come!