Cover up

I mentioned this before, but it bears repeating:  After spending so many hours on Kellye's Criollo saddle, I really, really did not want to cover all my hard work with a fleece pad.

The only way I could come to terms with the situation was to somehow create a pad worthy of the saddle.  Since I don't generally consider pads to be very interesting, this required a lot of thinking... and a lot of paper patterns!

Finally, I came up with a design that made me happy.  No mere square, it contained darts and seems that gave the pad its own saddle-like shape.

As good as it looked on the work desk, the real moment of truth came when I put it on the saddle, ran the strings though the slots, 

tied the pad into place, 

and cinched down the overgirth. 

You know, as much as I wanted that seat to show--this is pretty good, too!