What on earth could these three things have in common?

I'm glad you asked, oh you didn't? Haa Haa, well I do have a little story about them and it all started with a request from Lil Magill for her next interesting B-Western costume.

This time Lil had found a vintage 1940's brown gaberdine shirt and skirt featuring, you guessed it, a black mountain lion, dog and horse with a chenille palm tree like detail.

After discussions about changes of colour etc we decided to keep it to the original as close as possible.

I set to finding fabric similar to the original and during this quest for fabric, trim and snaps, Lil's brother John contacted me wanting to have this for her Christmas present. I'm sure she was presently surprised!

Now, around the time of initiating the project Jack and I were actually visitin with Texas Mac and Texas Flower. Flower and I were deep in conversation of the outfit and we both wondered as to the unusual grouping of the dog, horse and mountain lion.

As enquiring minds tend to do, I threw it into a Google search and to our surprise (and now this presents a whole new surprise to Lil. SURPRISE!! 🙂 ) I found a 1957 Golden Book – Roy Rogers and the Mountain Lion.

I could not believe my luck! I bought it straight away as a gift for Lil to go with her costume. The book itself other than some minor foiling missing on the spine does not appear to have ever been read. There are no creases in the pages, no writing in the 'This book belongs to' section and is in excellent condition.

Now I could get into the costume and get cracking. Eventually I found suitable mountain lion, horse and dog embroidery designs that I could then spend time changing colours and getting it to look close to the original.

The embroidery floss chain stitch detail was to follow and I'm feeling pretty pleased with myself at how it's coming together.

Finding the right fringe proved again to be an interesting feat so I purchased a longer version and spent time cutting it back to the required length. I eventually found the black snaps required. (actually should have been brown but as Mum says 'a blind man on a galloping horse wouldn't see it')

I altered the usual cuff pattern to make up similar to the original and was very pleased with how this turned out. It's all coming together nicely!

Next to last was the fringing and it looked terribly long, checking my measurements and a quick message to Lil meant 4 inches needed to come off! Unpick the fringe, cut, stitch and reapply.

Finally the hand stitching was completed and the snaps are on and the 'Roy Rogers' inspired outfit is ready for sending!

So looking forward to seeing you wear this one Lil!

Cheers and stitches!

Kat xo

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