There are many different ways to create beautiful mane for your self-sewn hobby horse. The popular classic is the knotted yarn mane! It has quite a number of advantages: you are completely free to determine the length, colour and density of the mane. After knotting, you can simply cut the strands to the desired legnth. In addition, a mane of yarn is perfect for a wide variety of braided hairstyles.

Another advantage of a Hobby Horse mane made of yarn that should not be neglected: you tie it to the finished horse. So if you need to replace the mane, e.g. because you want a new colour, you can simply redo the mane! And last but not least: A mane made of yarn just looks beautiful 🙂

This is how a yarn hobby horse mane is made

We show you how the Hobby Horse yarn mane is made in the following video tutorial from our YouTube channel using a beautiful dapple gray as an example. It’s really very simple! As the video is recorded in German, make sure you turn on the subtitles in your language! You can find more Hobby Horse videos in this Youtube playlist.

Finding the right yarn

Yarn is not just yarn! The yarns that are usually sold for knitting and crocheting vary greatly, e.g. in terms of material composition, volume, tear strength, stretchability and felting properties. If you want to style the mane a lot, a yarn made of synthetic fibers (like polyester) might be the best choice for you, as this usually “sheds“ relatively little.

If it is important to you that the mane is soft and feels great, you can use yarn made from natural fibers (e.g. merino wool). For us, the combination of merino and a thick and chunky yarn with needle size 5.5 or bigger is the best, as you will get a soft and voluminous mane with less strands. We have the following chunky merino yarns in our shop:

We also offer the yarn with the matching fabrics:

 

Hobby Horse mane made with mohair yarn

Mohair yarn is suitable for a particularly realistic look, as it has many small protruding fibers. This yarn is usually very thin and less easy to braid, but once knotted to your Hobby Horse it will look more like a real horse mane. You can also achieve great effects with colour gradients!

Please consider: With a thin yarn like mohair you need a way more strands to create a nice volume!