Wooden Rocking Horse Restore

We had an old rocking horse my children used and now that I have a grandson, I wanted to restore the horse that was up in our attic. It had old paint and the mane and tail were worse for the wear. I wanted to make it more for a boy and couldn't find much information on the web to do a restore.

• sandpaper
• white paint
• green acrylic paint or color of your choice
• yarn in a color of your choice
• cardboard
• stencil for stars or whatever shape you want
• staple gun with "U" staples
• book or object to wrap yarn around for the tail

I sanded the horse and painted it white to cover the old stencils and knots that were showing through.

Then I thought I could dye the yarn and it would turn out! Big mistake! I didn't know what kind of yarn was on the horse and some yarn does not take dye! If you have acrylic or polyester it probably won't work. Unfortunately, I tried with black and then brown Rit fabric dye and it made a mess. I also weakened the old glue that was holding some of the yarn on the mane. The first four pictures show what not to do if you try dyeing the yarn. You can see the clump that fell out! Here is an article on dyeing yarn if you want to try it.Dyeing Yarn

So, I ripped out the yarn on the mane and tail and bought some green yarn to use. Here is a link how to wrap the yarn. I used a book about 12 inches long to wrap the yarn around for the tail. It was about 50 wraps and then I put yarn at the top to tie it. I cut the yarn in half to make a full tail. For the mane, I used a piece of cardboard to wrap the yarn around. I curved the cardboard a bit, but you don't have to. I decided to add some Alene's glue to the edge of the cardboard as I wrapped the yarn. The horse had a slit for the mane and when I pulled out the old yarn there were staples in the wood. After the glue dried, it was easy to staple the tail on the horse and the mane down the back. I cut the mane at the long edge and trimmed the cardboard up to the glue line, The glue on the cardboard kept it together. I could also add more yarn if it looked sparse in spots. Also, the little bit of cardboard with the glue made it easy to shove the yarn in the slit. Unfortunately, because I tried to dye the yarn, the bridle got messed up! So I bought new leather strips to staple on the horse. After the mane and tail were attached, I painted the stars and the baby's name on the front.

I am pleased with how it turned out and can't wait for my grandson to enjoy it. We did the green for the Dallas Stars. Every old horse is different and you might have to really work at it to restore it!