I've been wanting to try making barding for my chiweenie Molly for awhile, and finally got around to it today after much pondering, mulling over pictures of horse barding, trying to sort out the rather mysterious pattern for barding found in Alcega, and finally watching some actual horses in actual barding yesterday at Coronation. For a first attempt I am pretty pleased with myself! And yay for getting to put some of my quilt piecing skills to use in an SCA project!
The body of the barding looks a little odd largely because there should be a split between the checky section and the bit with the Marinus arms on the rump which would accommodate a saddle and rider. Since Molly will not have a rider I left this out, so the join sort of looks funny to me. It's not so bad when she's walking around, but I think for the next iteration of barding I will tweak how I place the heraldic elements so the balance is a little better without the dividing line of the rider/saddle. The whole checky section needs to be shorter for one thing. I also need to slightly alter the curve over her rump, it's not laying as neatly as I would like.
There is a belly band holding the whole thing in place rather than the saddle component which is being held in place with a bit of velcro. This works great for small dogs, but is clearly not period so if I do this for an A&S entry I will need to find some small tack style buckles and soft leather to use to attach the whole thing. I also used a snap at the neck, again not period, I should I have a buckle, but that's what I had on had and it's not really visible. There's also a small leash opening along the center back seam to allow Molly's harness to attach to her leash, from what I've been able to see in period illustration dogs wore collars, not harnesses, but she tends to choke herself if I try to to walk her on a collar so we're sticking with the harness.
Molly will be wearing her fabulous new outfit next weekend at War of the Wings, hopefully I'll be able to get some better pictures of her there. Trying to get a clear shot with my phone while the other two dogs were looking on and trying to sort out what she had one was tricky at best!
