Our story begins with two precious little girls slowly, but surely, nurturing a love for horses. One day, they learnt how to trace using their mom’s baking paper and the obsession for horses began to grow. Every picture they could find of a horse, whether it be in a book, on a placemat or printed colouring-in pages from the internet …. it was all meticulously traced and redrawn into a beautiful collection of many, many horse pictures.

For birthdays, they kindly requested books on horses, which they studied with great interest (and, of course, traced all the pictures into their growing horse album collection).

Their little hearts longed for a horse of their very own, but alas, it was not to be.

One day, upon looking for new horse pictures on the internet, they stumbled upon a beautiful sewing pattern for a horse by Rustic Horseshoe. Their dear sweet mother had been trying to encourage them to develop their sewing skills, but so far had only managed to coax a simple skirt out of her girls. Upon careful reflection, the eldest daughter made up her mind that she was going to save up her pocket money and purchase this beloved sewing pattern. She shared her plans with her mother who strongly tried to dissuade her and instead encouraged her to rather purchase an easier-looking pattern of a little hamster. The wise mother knew that she would have to be the one sewing together the horse, and did not feel up to this challenge (as she was lacking in basic sewing skills herself!)

Unfortunately (or fortunately), this determined little eleven year old insisted and the sewing pattern was purchased. As the mother suspected, she ended up being the one to sew the horse. And as she also suspected, the younger sister also wanted one. And as she also suspected, the weary mother had to sew the second horse too.

The two girls were absolutely THRILLED with their new horse plushies and immediately began making plans of what the next horse should look like and be named. The concerned-for-her-sanity mother decided at that point to put her foot down and insisted that if any more horses were to be made, the young girls would have to make them themselves.

Things went quiet for a while and it seemed as though the matter had been forgotten … until one day the eldest daughter, now an optimistic twelve year old, decided she was going to sew her own horse. And she did. Her mother was so impressed and stunned by her determination and perseverance, that she could have been knocked off her socks by a feather!

Of course, once the little nine year old saw what her big sister could do, she decided to do it as well. And she did.

And the rest, you could say, is history. These two delightful girls started churning out horses on their beloved sewing machine.

And the orders started flooding in – there were horses for cousins, horses for friends and of course horses for themselves(!)

Saddles, bridles, paddock blankets and saddle pads were next! In all shapes and sizes!

And our story is not over yet … we’ve recently started sharing this blessing by teaching others how to do the same. 🙂 I might add that once you can confidently sew a horse, you can sew anything! Skirts and even dresses are a piece-of-cake!

This experience has been a true blessing to us – the money that has been earned was put towards long-awaited horseriding lessons. 🙂

If you enjoyed our story and share a love for horses, consider purchasing one of our beautiful hand-crafted horses. We put a lot of thought, love and care into each one and they make a perfect gift for children (horse-crazy or not!) and adults alike! Click here to visit our shop! 🙂

We love to hear from you! If you have been blessed by one of our Heart Horses let us know!

You can contact us at orders@hearthorses.co.za or tag us on Instagram @heart.horses.sa.