How to Decorate a Horse Stall for 4-H

You can earn ribbons with your horse without even riding it by competing in a 4-H show's stall decorating competition. If your 4-H club decides to enter this part of the horse show, by considering safety issues, the purpose and theme of the competition, and the 4-H rules, motto and pledge, you can make a unique stall curtain and poster that identifies your horse as a ribbon-deserving star.

Things You'll Need

  • Fabric
  • Clothesline or twine
  • Staple gun
  • Poster board or cork board
  • Solid construction paper complementary to fabric
  • Capital letter stencils 2-4 in. in size
  • Pictures of your horse winning ribbons
  • Props
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Instructions

  1. Showing Must Go On!

    • 1

      List ideas from the 4-H motto and the 4-H theme. Themes can be anything, like "Horse Sense." A motto example is "To make the best better." The 4-H participant pledges, "my head to clearer thinking, my heart to greater loyalty, my hands to greater service, and my health to better living," according to the extension office for the South Carolina State Fair.

    • 2
      Look for stall curtain fabric.

      Create a design that relates to two or more of the areas considered, (theme, motto pledge). Remember extension offices report that the purpose of the competition is to "create a visual display that demonstrates the educational activities of the 4-H Horse Program and Clubs." With a theme like "Horse Sense," you might try for showing how you took a great horse and improved him with training, resulting in the sense to jump cleanly, or to clear runs around barrels, or to do whatever your discipline requires.

    • 3

      Contact your fairgrounds to get the dimensions of the stall. Your material will want to span the width of the stall that faces the aisle.

    • 4

      Go to the fabric store to match your idea with fabric from which you can make a valance. To continue with the theme "Horse Sense," fabric might be school related with graduation hats and other academic items to indicate the intellect or sense of the horse. This valance will go above your horse's window in his stall. (If budget allows, you can also make a stall skirt to go under that window and make your theme more vivid.

    • 5

      Purchase enough fabric to be able to fold the top edge over by about 2 inches and make a single seam 1 3/4 inches from the fold.

    • 6

      Sew that seam (with a sewing machine or by hand with a quick whip stitch) and run the clothesline or twine through the pocket you make. Tie the valance with the ends of the line or twine to the bars on the stall, or staple it to the outside of the stall. If making a skirt for the stall, make it in the same way, but of course longer, to go from the window of the stall to the ground.

    • 7

      Create a visual display to hang with a staple gun and twine on your stall. Cover a poster board or cork board with leftover fabric from your valance. Glue pictures that illustrate your horse jumping well, barrel racing well or doing whatever you compete in well onto poster board or tack them to cork board. Use a solid color of construction paper or scrapbook paper and a stencil to cut out letters for a title with your theme ("Horse Sense") and your horse's name on the top of the board. You might make a focal point with one large picture of your horse winning a ribbon and then top it off by gluing a cut-out graduation hat onto the picture, making it look like your horse has graduated, or used his "sense."

    • 8

      Set props related to your theme on a chair or tack trunk near the stall. To continue with the "Horse Sense" theme, you could use a real graduation cap, a rolled paper to exhibit a diploma or other signs of achievement like trophies or other ribbons.